Rock the Water: Web music project aims for cleaner shorelines
Metro article about Swim Drink Fish Music Club
This video is a short profile of Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby. It is part of an “Environmental Heroes” series created by students at UNC-Chapel Hill.
We’d like to welcome Moose Riverkeeper as the newest Canadian Waterkeeper. Moose River is 547 km long, and its headwaters form at the Mattagmi River.
The newest Riverkeeper was approved by Waterkeeper Alliance this past June and is responsible for the Moose River, near James Bay, Ontario. Joseph Boyden, who is a Giller Book Prize winning writer and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper member, is the new Moose Riverkeeper. Joseph’s connection to the Moose River spans the past 20 years. An interview with Mr. Boyden is here. Joseph’s book Through Black Spruce integrates with the river as well.
President Clinton Speaks at Waterkeeper Alliance Annual Conference
Earth Mamas and Water Babies Mark and Krystyn from Lake Ontario Waterkeeper talk about the founding of their organization and the impact of mothers on the environmental movement. Their interviews include a radio podcast of the newest mother in the Waterkeeper movement, Lauren Brown from Fraser Riverkeeper.
Office of the Auditor General Canada’s 2009 spring report on Protecting Fish Habitats. Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada cannot demonstrate that fish habitat is being adequately protected as the Fisheries Act requires. This full report notes that Fisheries and Oceans Canada has made progress by focusing on development projects that represent a higher risk to habitat. However, the audit found that the Department does not adequately monitor projects that it has approved with certain conditions attached that are meant to protect fish habitat.
From the report:
1.87 Environment Canada has not clearly established what it plans to achieve with its main Fisheries Act responsibility—ensuring compliance by industries and activities with the Act’s prohibition against the deposit of harmful substances in water frequented by fish (the Department estimates that this could apply to hundreds of thousands of organizations or individuals).
1.88 Administration of the Act’s prohibition requirement. In 2005, Environment Canada established a Fisheries Act working group to develop and implement a national approach for administering the Act’s prohibition against the deposit of harmful substances in water frequented by fish. The working group identified nine national priorities and additional regional priorities (sectors, industries, or activities) where water pollution issues should be addressed through administering the Act’s prohibition requirement. The working group recommended a plan of action to address these priorities. It has not met since 2006, and no one is clearly assigned the responsibility for action on the issues identified.
1.89 Further, the working group observed that Environment Canada’s focus was on its administration of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 and that the Department no longer had the management structure to administer the Fisheries Act.
Some quotes from our Riverkeeper Doug Chapman:
This report clearly shows that Environment Canada does not even have the management structure to enforce the federal Fisheries Act, Canada’s most important legislation to protect our waters from pollution. This means that thousands of polluters across the country are able to violate our environmental legislation with impunity.
Now, more than any other time in our history, it is necessary for environmental groups like the Fraser Riverkeeper to patrol our waters, conduct pollution investigations and to bring private prosecutions against those who are polluting our waters.
National Province’s article is here.
Vancouver Sun Sustainable Living Expo, 2009
On the weekend of May 8-10, 2009 Fraser Riverkeeper joined more than 300 exhibitors at the Vancouver Sun Sustainable Living Expo (EP!C) held in Vancouver’s new convention center on the water. Exhibitions included other community and non-profit organizations, fashion, food and beverage, leisure, home and garden, transport, health and beauty, business and technology, and moms and babies booths. The focus of the convention was “green,” with hundreds of organizations showcasing how their products and services are geared toward being environmentally friendly and safe.
Fraser Riverkeeper’s booth gave away brochures, stickers, and newsletters as well as Waterkeeper magazines. Mary, Doug, and Carol attended the booth over the weekend, talking to interested visitors and making sure that they knew what we were about, what Waterkeeper Alliance is about, and what we are currently doing about the Fraser River.
Our visitors included a city planner, several “streamkeepers,” anglers, nature lovers, biologists, people who live on the river, and all types of people young and old who were interested in the state of the river and concerned about not only their neighborhood creek or stream, but about all of the Fraser and its tributaries.
We also presented a slideshow of our latest event photos: the Pegleg Gravel Bar clean-up in Chilliwack, which elicited awe, as many people had no idea how much waste you could pull off one gravel bar in one afternoon. Others were well aware of the problems of not just private dumping but dangerous agricultural and municipal waste runoff.
Everyone who stopped by was very concerned about the Fraser River’s current and future health. We reminded people of our pollution hotline, investigation of complaints, and our resources to build cases if illegal dumping is found.
We want to thank everyone for stopping by our booth and being interested in what we do. We encourage you to visit our website often (and watch for new science articles), get involved, and become a member! If you would like to make a donation, please click our “Donate Now” button, which will take you to a secure donation site as well as automatically send you a charitable tax receipt in return.
Environmentalist Alumnus Addresses Conservation Issues at Reunions ’08
“Doug Chapman ’58, the Fraser Riverkeeper in Vancouver, Canada, and Bob Boyle, who helped found the Riverkeeper movement, discussed their roles in the environmental movement to a Kennedy Auditorium packed with alumni.”
By Holly Foster, Hamilton College
Fraser Riverkeeper and Woodtone Hosted Fantastic Turnout at Annual Earth Day Fraser River Cleanup at Pegleg Gravel Bar, Chilliwack
Fraser Riverkeeper and Woodtone worked with the city of Chilliwack and Rotz Disposal to organize this year’s Fraser River clean-up at the Pegleg Gravel Bar in Chilliwack on Sunday, April 19th.
The mighty Fraser River is the longest river in Canada’s beautiful British Columbia. The river’s watershed is a vast ecological, cultural, and economic treasure chest, which drains more than one-fourth of the province before its egress into the Pacific through Vancouver. This river is where the heart lies for Vancouver’s Fraser Riverkeeper, a registered charitable organization founded in 2005 under the leadership of renowned environmental advocate and seasoned prosecutor, Mr. Doug Chapman.
Fraser Riverkeeper has played an active part in community outreach and education, law enforcement, river patrol, and enhancement of the ecological health and integrity of the river and its tributaries. On April 19th 2009, Fraser Riverkeeper continued its river stewardship by taking part in its second annual Earth Day event: helping to organize the cleanup of Fraser River’s Pegleg Bar, one of the numerous gravel bars located on the river between Hope and Mission.
These bars provide important riparian zones for aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals. As the river leaves the Fraser Canyon at Hope and enters the vast floodplain extending westward to the Georgia Strait, it loses a significant amount of energy, which allows heavier aggregate material to be deposited. Given the right conditions, gravel bars and islands form over time.
For those unfamiliar with the gravel bars in the Fraser Valley, they are absolutely remarkable to see. During the late winter and early spring before the freshet begins, the gravel bars are exposed and their expanse is mind-boggling. Much of the exposed gravel will be submerged underwater once the freshet begins in late spring, becoming one of many sport fishing hotspots in the area.
Unfortunately, there are those who are not aware of the importance of these bars and continue to dump along the river. At last year’s Earth Day cleanup, in the span of two hours, about 50 volunteers collected over four tons of waste materials: two and a half tons of garbage and two tons of metal, including bicycles, household appliances, mattress springs, and other recyclables.
This year, to celebrate Earth Day in its second annual cleanup, Fraser Riverkeeper worked once again with Woodtone, the city of Chilliwack, Rotz Disposal, and many other friends of the river – with more than double the amount of last year’s volunteers. We also pulled out 11 tons of waste, including the remains of a car and a washing machine.
Doug Chapman of the Fraser Riverkeeper thanked everybody for their efforts and spoke of the difference even a small change can make. “The garbage you removed today will not be able to disintegrate and affect the wildlife that inhabits the river. And the plastics pose an even larger threat, as it either gets ingested by fish that are later consumed by people or floating plastics end up in the large plastic ‘island’ in the North Pacific Gyre.”
Barry Penner, MLA for Chilliwack-Kent and Minister of Environment, was also out lending his support to the effort. Barry was encouraged by the huge volunteer turnout and by the impact they had on cleaning up such an important part of the river.
We’d like to give special thanks to Woodtone, Rotz Disposal, and the city of Chilliwack for all their efforts in joining forces to ensure that the 2009 cleanup went so smoothly. We’d also like to thank Coast Capital Savings, RBC Blue Water Project, and the Young Foundation for donating funds to this event. We’d like to thank the press, especially Hawk FM and Star FM, for keeping the community up-to-date. Also, a great thanks to our in-kind donations from Waste Services Industry, Pro-Fab, Watson Gloves, Norm’s Concrete, Nestlé Waters Canada, Tim Horton’s, Save-on-Foods, and Preserved Seed Cafe. Thanks to all the families for joining us and to those who brought trucks and were able to get heavier metals.
