On Sept. 16, 2012, your paper reported on a four-year, $400,000 grant from the Royal Bank of Canada’s Blue Water Project to support the development of a codified body of Syilx water management knowledge in the Okanagan.
Two years into that program, voters in Vernon were asked to vote on a $70 million water plan, also laid out in 2012.
I am saddened that on Nov. 15, 2014, I was asked to vote on water use in Greater Vernon without the benefit of the knowledge from the Syilx (Okanagan First Nations) study, and without its findings being incorporated into an expanded plan.
The current Greater Vernon master water plan contains six main items: filtration, separation of agricultural and domestic water, improved domestic distribution, a doubling of irrigation water capacity, a new pump station on Okanagan Lake and the raising of the Aberdeen Dam four metres.
No doubt it is all impeccably engineered. It doesn’t, however, appear to incorporate any possible natural purification opportunities, delivery systems, conservation systems and crop systems that a Syilx perspective might offer.
That might be a significant failing. It might be worth big savings. We just don’t appear to know.
What’s more, with the recent Tsilq’hotin decision, it’s clear that First Nation claims to land and water are legally very much alive in B.C.
Because of that, I believe that the best long-term chance for Greater Vernon is to work with the Syilx to create mutually-beneficial systems that will lead to a unification of resources in the future.
The alternative is to risk a dangerous politicization of water, that will reduce capacity in our region for everyone, if nothing else.
Imagine what even five or 10 per cent of that $70,000,00 might do to further water sustainability, delivery and conservation?
What’s more, the proposed new pump station on Okanagan Lake, intended to draw agricultural water out of the lake rather than out of high country reservoirs has possible political repercussions we would be remiss to ignore.
Water is a provincial and a First Nations concern, but when it crosses the border into Washington, it also becomes a national one.
American laws around water are clear: water flowing through native American communities is first and foremost native American water, right up to its headwaters.
That makes sense.
After all, the Syilx live in Okanogan County as well. The border that cuts our valley in two is not their fault. A treaty signed between Washington and London did that.
I’d certainly hate to spend $2.6 million dollars on a pump station, for water that might be compromised by international political pressures, when that money could be spent instead on developing shared water capacity and management with the Syilx, to ensure shared water for the future, created through work within our national, provincial, regional district, civic, and First Nations governments.
In terms of water, not one of those is separate from the others.
And not one of them is separate from very real demands being made today in Washington State.
If the government in Ottawa is going to get involved in water, let’s help them help us by developing water use in common — including conservation within living systems — for common use.
If we don’t do that, who knows?
I for one don’t want to spend $70 million on who knows.
Harold Rhenisch
Vernon
