A new water harvesting study, and continued protection of biodiversity issues are just two areas of concern for the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association (SCCA) in 2009.
The SCCA held its annual general meeting last Saturday in Sechelt where they elected several directors and received a detailed report from executive director Dan Bouman.
Elected as directors for 2009 to 2011 were David Moore and Denise Reinhardt, both residents of Powell River, Michael Siddall, Marianne Larsen, Linda Williams and Jason Herz. Janet Genders, Katie Janyk and David Moul are continuing their terms as directors and their positions were not up for re-election.
In his report, Bouman spoke about Gospel Rock and the continuing development of the neighbourhood plan, water issues with the Town of Gibsons, the Natural Resource Advisory Committee through the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), the launch of The People's Water - the fight for the Sunshine Coast's drinking watershed, co-authored by himself and Andrew Scott, a rain harvesting study and independent power projects (IPPs).
Bouman said he is very proud of the new book and recognized the tremendous level of work that Scott put into the project.
"We feel good about it. It tells a story of public empowerment," said Bouman. "We feel it is going to put everyone on a common level of understanding. At least everyone who reads the book will know about all the things that have been done in this incredible community of committed activists who just never accept no for an answer."
A new project for the SCCA is a rain harvesting study.
Through grant money Bouman said the SCCA created a study and made presentations to the SCRD and the Sechelt Indian Band (SIB). He said they will also be taking it to the Town of Gibsons and the District of Sechelt.
"People start using more and more water in the summer time, especially for irrigation and there are limits on the amount of water we can take out of Chapman Creek because of the salmon stocks," he said. "We want to bring something positive to the public consultation, so we started looking at rain harvesting and how it could work here. We'd like to see the SCRD buy into this and assist the public in developing these systems. We'd like the public to know there are options under which they can have their own independent water supply."
Bouman said the study will be up on the SCCA's website at www.thescca.ca soon.
Bouman also touched on IPPs and how the issue has gotten bigger and nastier over the last couple of years.
"Over time, I started to realize that in our membership there is a lot of different orientations towards IPPs. A lot of people feel strongly that it is renewable energy and that it should be pursued, others feel it is not a good idea," he said. "In dealing with it, we had to go back to our mandate which is the protection of biodiversity. What we came to is that we will participate in every public venue that we can possible can where issues of biodiversity arise."
Bouman said they also continue to work on a positive working relationship with the SIB on IPP issues.
"We had a public information meeting in January and at the start of that meeting we we're handed a letter from the SIB chastising us for not giving them proper notice of the meeting and they were quite correct I might add," said Bouman. "Just recently we got another letter from the Band and the Klahoose Indian Band which was quite disturbing. It's incredibly important to work with the SIB and we met with them last week and I apologized for our numerous indiscretions that mostly arise from our ignorance of their protocols. The Klahoose seemed to indicate we didn't have a right to participate in the federal environmental assessment with regards to the Bute Inlet IPP. That will be one of the things we just won't agree with. We would like to have a relationship with them and maybe we will someday.
"As we go into the future, the stance we will have is we want to see environmental assessments function well, address all the issues and we will be there to raise those issues."
