I’d like to comment about remarks that have been published in the Observer about the proposed SmartCentres development on the Salmon River floodplain, and about the position of our nonprofit society, WA:TER (Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response).

First, this development is not a done deal. Public hearings, like those last fall, will be taking place in a few weeks. It is then that the decision will be made about whether this project goes ahead or not. Second, our group, WA:TER, is not at all opposed to development in this community. But we are firmly opposed, for completely solid scientific and cultural reasons, to development on this site alone.

Third, we are opposed because this property lies in a very rich but “red-listed” (critically threatened) black cottonwood/snowberry ecosystem, which also includes a vulnerable salmon-bearing river, and is part of a filtering and recharge system for the water in Salmon Arm Bay, where we get most of our drinking water. It also lies next to the heart of two of this area’s First Nations communities, whose leadership and wishes have been studiously ignored by both the developer and city authorities, throughout almost all of this process.

Fourth, the report from SmartCentres discussing environmental concerns has omitted this property’s ecosystem values and water-filtering functions entirely and ignored the impact of the development on the rest of the floodplain. It also disregards any impact on adjacent First Nations’ lands and people.

Finally, the under-staffed Ministry of Environment and Fisheries and Oceans Canada can do only a very superficial review of this kind of report (we know, because we asked directly). Both agencies respond almost exclusively to violations after damage has been done, or to variance requests. They cannot protect this ecosystem.

This entire controversy relates, not to an argument over development versus no development, but to the wisdom of damaging or destroying our community’s most valuable ecological resource, when so many other opportunities for development exist in plain sight.

Warren Bell,

president, WA:TER