Environment Canada is still studying the dead fish found in the North Alouette River in May, while B.C.’s Ministry of Environment has yet to decide if a water line installed by the Golden Eagle Group is allowed under the cranberry producer’s current water licences.

Golden Eagle, though, admitted Tuesday it installed the pipe June 4 before it was granted its second round of water licences because it was afraid it would lose its berry crop during a hot spring.

Spokesman Rick Matis said the company was waiting for the Ministry of Environment and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to decide on water levels. In the meantime, 200 acres of cranberries were at risk because of the dry spring.

“At that point, we had to make a decision while we were still waiting for them and we put it in.”

If they hadn’t, the farm would have have lost those plants, he added, estimating it’s pumped 100,000 litres.

“If we can go every couple of weeks and have a rainfall, we wouldn’t need anything.”

The company, part of the Aquilini Investment Group – which owns the Vancouver Canucks – wants to more than double the amount of water it pumps from the North Alouette for its blueberry and cranberry operations from a current 977 acre/feet per year to 1,536 acre/feet.

It sought to do that when it applied for a dozen licences in 2007.

The Water Stewardship Division of the Ministry of Environment is reviewing those applications as well as the pump and pipe recently installed across the North Alouette dike to see if it falls under the current licence. An acre/foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land to a depth of a foot or 30 centimetres.

“The Water Stewardship Division will communicate results of the investigation when it is possible to do so,” Julia Berardinucci, with the B.C. Water Stewardship Division, said Friday.

In a second inspection within a month, Environment Canada enforcement officers showed up on the North Alouette June 23 to inspect the kill of hundreds of thousands of dead fish reported by canoeist Jack Emberly in May.

The officers checked pH levels of the water, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and temperatures. Results haven’t been released.

Officials also agreed to analyze the dead fish that Emberly put in his freezer. Results of that are also pending, said Tracy Lacroix-Wilson with Environment Canada.

Those results will also determine the next steps, if any, the department takes.

“Enforcement officers conduct regular, planned inspections of activities regulated under the Fisheries Act. All reported fish kills are treated seriously and followed up,” she said.

Meanwhile, photos taken of the North Alouette in the same area of the pump, about a 20-minute walk along the dike east of Neaves Road, are fuelling a call for better management of the river by the Alouette River Management Society.

Zale Hammren, a director with ARMS, took several photos Oct. 11, 2006 of the river, showing it virtually dry. It’s sometimes possible for such conditions to occur naturally.

Yet according to Water Survey of Canada data provided by ARMS, on that day there was at least a low-flow in the river of 1,000 litres per second, recorded upstream at 232nd Street.

Hammren said he took the photos in the same general area near Golden Eagle where the new intake was installed.

He said by e-mail that many ordinary people are prosecuted for small incursions of the river. Matis, though, said the berry operation doesn’t use any water after September, when the flood harvest of cranberries takes place.

And if the river was that dry, the farm wouldn’t have been able to pump from it, he added.

“We can clearly see fish are stranded out in [a] hot fall day,” said Geoff Clayton, also with ARMS.

If the Golden Eagle Group is monitoring its withdrawals from the river, it can provide an explanation, he said. “Just show us the records.

“Why is it that farmers don’t have to have … a record in the way they extract water the way the manage it and industry does?

“That’s the whole question here.”

He says it’s time all the users of the river sit down and talk.

Ministry of Environment, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, farmers and residents should all work out a water-use plan – like that reached by ARMS with B.C. Hydro.

That agreement specifies water flows in the South Alouette River, allowing Hydro to meet its power demands from the Alouette reservoir, while ensuring enough flow for fish.

“The time has really come for us to stop yelling at them,” Clayton said.

He hadn’t seen the photos until this week.

“I’m just horribly amazed. I think they’re just shocking. I guess they epitomize one thing for me: the people who hand out the licences, do it in supreme isolation.”

They don’t see the effects of their decisions as do the local residents, he added, and that removing the water has hurt the river.

Matis said Golden Eagle would consider working with local groups on a water-use plan.

“We’re open to ideas. We’re not trying to be difficult … we don’t want the river to die.”