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Management plan nears completion for River of Golden Dreams watershed

Plan will provide a framework for the municipality to help balance the different values at stake in the watershed Paddling a canoe from the Lakeside Park on Alta Lake to Green Lake via the River of Golden Dreams is on the list of essential Whistler e

Plan will provide a framework for the municipality to help balance the different values at stake in the watershed

Paddling a canoe from the Lakeside Park on Alta Lake to Green Lake via the River of Golden Dreams is on the list of essential Whistler experiences, like hiking Singing Pass or skiing the Blackcomb Glacier.

You can do it in half an hour if you paddle full out, but you’ll probably want to take it slow and check out the scenery. It’s a view of Whistler you’ve never seen before – with all but a few residences obscured by vegetation, a trip down the River of Golden Dreams gives you an idea of what Whistler might have been like before all of the development.

There’s another way to view the River of Golden Dreams, however, and that requires taking a step back to look at the big picture. It’s a small but important part of a larger water system that starts at the peak of Rainbow Mountain, and trickles down into Whistler via seven different streams and a number of smaller unnamed tributaries.

It includes Alta Lake, a focal point of recreation, and both of Whistler’s primary drinking water sources – Twenty One Mile Creek for most of Whistler and Agnew Creek for the Alpine Meadows and Emerald subdivisions. And throughout the entire watershed, there are wildlife values, fish values and recreational values to balance and protect, starting at the source.

To determine what those values are and how best to protect them, the municipality commissioned the River of Golden Dreams Watershed Plan. The plan looks at the watershed both as a whole and in its individual components, recommending actions to accomplish six fundamental goals:

1. Water quality and quantity are protected and restored in all streams, lakes and wetlands within the River of Golden Dreams (ROGD) watershed;

2. The quality and quantity of aquatic and terrestrial habitat within the River of Golden Dreams watershed is protected and restored;

3. Potential flooding risk to life and property within the ROGD watershed is minimized through ecologically sensitive means;

4. The ROGD watershed experiences minimal ecological impacts from diverse recreation opportunities;

5. ROGD watershed stakeholders demonstrate co-operative stewardship;

6. Watershed management initiatives within the ROGD watershed reflect the principle of adaptive management.

This is Whistler’s second watershed management plan, if you include the Crabapple Creek plan which was smaller in scope.

According to Christina Symko, the independent contractor hired to research and write the ROGD report, watershed management plans are becoming a vital resource for B.C. communities.

"They are pretty new to B.C., but in the United States they’ve been doing this for years and every city and town has to have a watershed management plan. In Ontario, it’s been going on since the early 1990s," says Symko. "It’s only in the last five years that we’ve started to put management plans together in the province, and there are maybe five or six completed watershed management plans in the province."

For communities like Whistler, where the watershed is well used and under a lot of pressure from recreation and resource industries, watershed management plans are becoming a necessity.

"In a lot of places, people don’t depend on their watersheds for drinking water, they depend on other sources like wells or reservoirs. But in communities where drinking water comes from the watershed, I think there’s a huge impetus to start taking better care of the watershed they live in. Having a plan, even though it might not offer the solutions to everything, can at least give you a framework to work with," says Symko.

"It sets out the values of the watershed and identifies what’s important to the community. From there, as conditions change and as our knowledge of the environment changes, we can adapt the framework and work towards solutions. Having something in place is very important for getting things started and getting them done.

"The first recommendation of the plan, for example, is to find out how we can gain control over our drinking water sources. Right now the sources are beyond municipal boundaries, but there are ways as a community we can gain more control and have more say in what goes on."

Within the valley, the list of Tier One stakeholders involved in the ROGD management plan includes the municipal parks department, the planning and development department, the engineering and public works department, the Forest and Wildlands Advisory Committee, the Whistler Angling Club, the Whistler Fisheries Stewardship Group, the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment, Whistler Outdoor Experience, Whistler-Blackcomb, the Whistler Off Road Cycling Association and Whistler residents.

Tier Two stakeholders include municipal departments, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the provincial government, B.C. Assets and Lands, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and the Squamish Nation.

The plan recommends hundreds of different actions to maintain the integrity of the ROGD watershed, everything from political initiatives such as bylaws and agreements with other levels of government, to stream enhancement projects, to public education. The actions are itemized according to the goals set out in the introduction to the plan.

One action under the first goal is to finalize an agreement between Whistler and the Forestry Ministry to ensure that no future commercial timber harvesting takes place in the Twenty One Mile and Agnew Creek watersheds.

Under the fifth goal, one action recommends implementing an interpretive trail network along the ROGD with signs to educate paddlers along the way. Possible topics for these signs could include historic uses of the river, fish and wildlife cycles and habitat requirements, and the impacts of development.

"On many levels, education is one of the most important parts of the plan," says Symko. "There’s education for businesses and the municipal government, and there’s education of the public and visitors to the resort. I don’t know how many people connect Twenty One Mile creek with the water coming out of their taps, but when we first started the working group, only a few people know that Agnew Creek was what Alpine Meadows is drinking."

The ROGD plan also includes actions to accommodate, and in some cases, regulate the recreational activities in the watershed.

"There are tonnes of recreation issues, even just looking at trail conditions in some places. Some trails go through creeks and sensitive wetlands, and in those cases it’s just a matter of getting trailbuilders and groups like WORCA to figure out ways to go over or around theses areas," says Symko.

"Another recreational activity we’ve been talking about is all the canoeing on the River of Golden Dreams, looking at the potential impacts of the increasing number of visitors and changing use patterns. We have to look at the issues, and make sure we’re not impacting the wetlands corridor any more than we need to be. We’re getting those statistics together now, and the different operators that rent canoes for the trip are fully co-operating."

The draft of the ROGD Management Plan is complete, and in the next few months Symko will be making sure all of the relevant background and scientific information is included. There is some mapping to complete, and some of the recommended actions need to be flushed out in finer detail.

Tier One and Tier Two stakeholders will also get another opportunity to revise and fine tune elements of the plan.

Symko expects to present the plan to council in mid-October, who will vote on whether or not to adopt it or revise it further.

"In November we presented the concept of the plan to council and they fully supported it, so we’re not expecting any drastic changes at this point."

Copies of the draft plan are available to the public, and comments can be addressed to Symko at symko@direct.ca .