As the chum and coho salmon finish their return to the Cheakamus River, BC Hydro representativs explain how the company operates in the Sea to Sky and how it tries to reduce the number of fish killed because of it.
After extensive media attention — and public backlash — resulted from a massive fish stranding and die-off on the river in September, BC Hydro invited The Chief out to their Squamish headquarters and to the banks of the Cheakamus River to talk to its representatives: Alf Leake, environmental specialist; Darren Sherbot, manager, of operations and planning, and Colin Rombough, natural resource specialist.
On Sept. 20, local biologists estimate that more than 2,000 pre-spawned pink salmon died from being stranded without enough water in the Cheakamus River due to BC Hydro's operations in the corridor.
The BC Hydro reps say a heavy rainstorm meant its operators had to increase flows down the river to prevent exceeding maximum reservoir levels and ensure public safety.
Dramatic rainstorms can be a challenge in terms of controlling river flows, the men acknowledged.
Ramping up usually doesn't cause issues, they say, but ramping down — or reducing the flow to the river — can be tricky.
Following the September storm, the flows to the river were reduced too drastically, local biologists say.
These biologists and corridor fishers have been particularly critical of Hydro's operations when it comes to killing fish in the Cheakamus and Squamish rivers.
The most vocal are members of the Water Use Plan advisory committee. Monitoring Advisory Committees were established to advise a number of BC Hydro facilities, including in Squamish. They include biologists, such as Squamish's Chessy Knight and others with a stake or interest in the local fishery.
BC Hydro says when they know better, they do better.
"One thing I feel that hasn't gotten out... is that we have been doing a lot of really good work. We have been out monitoring and implementing mitigation every single ramp down for the last year and a half now," said Rombough, as the team stood beside the Cheakamus River in Paradise Valley where some of the stranded fish died in September.
"We aren't perfect. Nobody is ever going to be perfect. We are adaptive, we are learning, we are trying to get there and we are incorporating all of this feedback."
Rombough added he regularly reaches out to stakeholders and the company dialogues with the Squamish Nation and regulators.
The primary fishery regulator is Canadian Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
He added that since the Sept. 20 fish kill, crews are doing reconnaissance missions before the rampdowns.
"The crews are going out and rafting the entire high-risk area of the river," he said, from Road's End to the bottom section of the river.
"In that rafting, they are looking and using their knowledge of being out on the river for the last 15 years to understand where the risk might lie."
Leake added they have also incorporated salvage crews into the mitigation plans.
Salvaging involves physically moving the isolated fish from the pools they are stranded in.
Leake acknowledged that it isn't always effective and said it is a last resort.
All the reps said there is a lot of co-ordination and planning that goes into every ramp down.
Lessons learned from one ramping are incorporated into the next one, they say.
Its Water Use Plan defines the detailed operating parameters to be used by BC Hydro facility managers in their day-to-day use of the province's water.
"The plans are intended to clarify how rights to provincial water resources should be exercised and to take account of the multiple uses for those resources," states a BC Hydro online explainer about the plans.
Between 1999 and 2004, BC Hydro prepared 23 Water Use Plans. Squamish's was accepted by the Comptroller of Water Rights and implemented in February of 2006.
The Water Use Plan Order Review Program will determine whether the current water-management constraints on BC Hydro's operations are achieving its specific environmental and social objectives and changes can be recommended.
Review process
The Water Use Plan Order Review process has two phases. It starts with a Monitoring Program Synthesis Report review and that includes a public consultation period. The second phase is the order review phase.
The Monitoring Program Synthesis Report summarizes all the monitoring programs over the last 10 to 12 years, Leake said.
That report will be released by the end of this year or early in the new year.
Then key stakeholders will be consulted, he added.
"Where we are taking that information, collecting the monitoring and identifying how we can make changes to the existing order," Leake said. "We have an existing order, it has ramp rates, it has minimum flows, it has some studies... that is the scope of the things we would look at in the second phase."
For some sites, the order review results in the status quo at the BC Hydro facility, such as with two BC Hydro sites on Vancouver Island, but that isn't likely here, Leake said.
"Here, there've been some concerns brought forward, and we recognize that the process is going to be more involved. We know that First Nations are going to be interested, we know regulators are interested, we know that there are stakeholders in the community that are involved as well. We're still working out how that engagement is going to happen."
BC Hydro moved up the order review period for our area to address issues of concern sooner, Leake said.
Video by Chessy Knight
Fish kill tipping point?
Asked what number of fish killed would be too many for the company, the Hydro representatives said there isn't a number that is a tipping point.
"Out of the Water Use Planning process, we've retained a Fisheries Act authorization for our operations. We did that across the province at all 23 facilities that went through the WUP process," Leake. "As part of that fisheries act authorization process, we have conditions. We must monitor and if we monitor and see something we didn't anticipate as a level of impact, then we have to go through some sort of corrective action process. So, that is how we have been managing on Cheakamus."
The company works with First Nations, regulators and stakeholders to implement corrective actions.
"It is not a number. It is just we have this regulatory framework. We have a corrective action process we have to go through. And we implement them." he added.
Leake said that BC Hydro has "a very close relationship with regulators."
"From some perspectives, that might look like it is not a good thing, but it is a really good thing because we are always proactive in coming up with solutions. Even though the Water Use Plan was set 10 or 15 years ago, we have actually made significant changes and gains in several of our facilities as we go through the process so it is really with that framework in place we can actually implement those changes."
Knight said that there is no way to know, without better monitoring, what impact the operations are having on fish populations.
"I think we can all agree here, the eye-opening, jaw-droopingly bad stranding events that we saw in summer 2018 and 2019 surely exceed some 'tipping point,'" she said.
"Leake is correct, BC Hydro does have a very close relationship with regulators... too close.”
Knight said given this close relationship, it seems unlikely BC Hydro would ever be charged or fined for killing fish.
[The DFO was unable to confirm or deny that it has never issued fines or charged the utility, prior to press deadline.]
Why the disconnect with local stakeholders?
Asked why there is discord between Squamish fish conservationists and those at BC Hydro, Leake pointed to the end of some monitoring programs.
"We were involved in this [Water Use Planning committee] and it was an annual meeting, reviewing the results of the studies and checking back with the stakeholders, and regulators, and First Nations as to whether or not the studies were effective," Leake said.
Leake added that when some studies ended, that upset Squamish fish conservationists.
"The programs end for two reasons: they run their course, or two, they have answered the questions. For the most part, we answered management questions except for two critical studies — monitoring program Number 1 that looks at salmon out-migration... and Number 3... — that looks at steelhead productivity."
He said these are two very challenging questions.
"So, what is the relationship between flow and productivity? Without major changes to our operations, we found over the last 10 years, we can't really tease out that answer."
For BC Hydro, it came down to the choice to keep all monitoring when the company knows it can't answer the management questions under the current Water Use Plan or pausing the monitoring until the Water Use Plan Order Review runs its course.
"We made sort of a half-and-half decision. On the salmon productivity one, we are going to pause that monitoring and wait for the WUP Order review re-evaluate and hopefully, improve on monitoring terms of reference and study design and implement it there, if that is what the WUP OR decides and the Number 3 [monitoring study,] we said that it is still answering some questions... so we will keep that going."
For her part, Knight, biologist and WUP committee member, said that as far as the advisory committee is concerned, the meetings are to continue, so should not be referred to in the past tense.
"The WUP monitoring committee is expecting a meeting this year to review 10-plus year synthesis monitoring reports, the ramping study report, and to discuss next steps for monitoring. No meetings have been scheduled, and no reports have been made available to us. At the very least, BC Hydro could tell us when these various reports will be completed, stick to those dates, and let us know when we can expect to meet and discuss the reports' findings. The whole process for BC Hydro communication with the WUP committee is unorganized," she said.
Knight doesn't disagree with the assessment that some discord is over Hydro limiting its monitoring.
She says there is no mandate or reason for the monitoring to stop.
"For some of the programs, such as the juvenile salmon production and steelhead production (adult and juvenile), I firmly believe that these programs should continue throughout the duration of the power plant's operation," she said.
Why not follow the DFO guidelines?
Knight has long argued that BC Hydro should at least follow the recommendations of the fisheries regulator, Canadian Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), but they don't, for the most part.
Asked why Hydro doesn't follow DFO's recommendations for rampdowns for 2.5 centimetres per hour, the BC Hydro representatives said they keep asking themselves what is the most effective ramprate and what is the best way of mitigating risk.
"We don't want to — without reason — constrain operations. That does have cost implications and it does have other flooding implications, but that isn't the primary reason that we are looking at. We want to understand what is the relationship between stranding risk and ramping rate in particular." Leake said.
Hydro notes that with the Sept. 20 incident they were actually ramping down at 2.5 cms per hour and that still didn't mitigate for the stranding.
"What we see, typically in adults... they are going to spawn in 15 cms of water and then they are going to be attached to those areas that they spawn in, so if we dropped flows, they are going to strand. It is not the rate in those cases."
Knight said she was pleased to hear Hydro acknowledge that ramping rates can impact revenues.
"We have asked BC Hydro to share with us the lost revenues resulting from slower ramping rates, such that we can have the larger social conversation about whether the reduction of fish stranding is worth the lost revenues," she said.
Knight argued while it is true that sometimes even ramping at a slow rate (e.g., 2.5 cm/hour) cannot prevent fish stranding, she said BC Hydro is not acknowledging the other half of the stranding problem.
That fish kill was caused, Knight says, because BC Hydro seems to have cut river flows in half in less than one day.
"When Cheakamus flows are cut in half, like from 40 cms to 20 cms... a slow ramp rate cannot mitigate all fish stranding. Forty cms is already a low flow for the Cheakamus; when it's cut in half, there is simply not enough wetted habitat for fish."
Rombough said it is important to put the DFO recommended rates into context.
"Those are the recommended rates in the absence of any other monitoring," he said, adding they are not based on the Cheakamus River.
"Our approach is to implement mitigation and try to understand what is effective on the Cheakamus River. And we think it is a better approach to try to understand what works specifically for this system, rather than just putting blanket instructions down... that may not be effective."
Knight argues the methods used to develop the DFO recommended rates were sound.
"My own analysis of natural ramping rates on the Cheakamus indicates that a ramp rate of 2.5 cm/hour is a very good starting point," she said.
