The Mission Record Thursday, March 8, 2012 19
Mission Chamber of Commerce
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The Fraser River - A powerful resource at our front door Mission has utilized the Fraser River to distribute and transport its resources and goods to market since amalgamation in the 1970s.
W
hile our relationship with the river has shifted to the annual freshet flood watch and salmon count, we need to return to utilizing the river in a manner that is built on our economic sustainability. Since the 1800s, locals have diked the Fraser to harness its flow and develop local agriculture. This fertile area now produces more than 62 per cent of the gross farm receipts in B.C. in only 1.6 per cent of the province’s ALR lands. Initially, the Fraser was utilized to move these perishables along with logs and other resources to the growing market and port in Vancouver. Historically, the federal government found value in maintaining the river as an asset through Public Works Canada. In 1998, the federal and provincial governments stepped away from the maintenance of the river and downloaded responsibility to the municipalities and ill-funded diking authorities for maintenance of the flood protection systems; however, they maintained authority over allowing any work to be done. The outcome is a series of bureaucratic processes that take more than two
years to complete and if approval is given, windows of work are usually limited to time during freshet when the river is unworkable. Often these works are limited to small areas with little impact on the whole system. In a quantitative flood risk assessment for the City of Chilliwack, damage and loss figures from a dike-breach scenario would exceed $1 billion. What would be the cost to Mission if flood levels like 1948 occurred again? Impact of that event would affect the industrial parks and shopping areas as well as disrupting transportation routes to the south, east and west. Not only would our employment base be affected but access for those 80 per cent who work outside Mission would also be impacted. Due to siltation and lack of maintenance of a main navigation channel on the Fraser, resources that historically have been moved
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to market via the river now must be trucked through Mission. One log boom is equivalent to 50-80 logging trucks. As the river has become impassable for six to eight months of the year east of Mission for items of more than four feet under water, the number of trucks is growing to a record 360 per day through our struggling downtown. Environmentally, the greenhouse gas impact of one tug on the Fraser is less than five trucks. Lack of river maintenance is also impacting softer industries like tourism. Both fishing charters and tour boat operators are not able to traverse the shallow waters which can be as low as 15” in some areas. Tourism brings an estimated $1 of every $6 spent in Mission and over $94 million in direct angler
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expenditures occurs in the Lower Mainland. Looking forward, without a navigable Fraser, Mission’s opportunity to leverage industrial river access in a shrinking market and growth towards short-sea shipping opportunities will be negligible. As the Asia Gateway blossoms, Mission has a unique opportunity to be a hub of rail, road and river to grow our economic base. The Fraser is a comprehensive system. The piecemeal approach that has existed since 1998 is not working. That is why the Mission Chamber is asking the federal and provincial governments to work with local government and First Nations to develop a comprehensive
management plan for the Fraser River that balances economic, environment and public safety of the present system; that the process for work to be done on the river be simplified and that a central authority be created, not unlike the St. Lawrence. This authority would be responsible for the planning and maintenance of the Fraser. The Fraser is the backbone of the province, the mouth of the Asia Gateway and a competitive economic edge for Mission. Managing it is a key to our sustainable development.
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