OCTOBER 2018 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
23
When the right thing turns out to be wrong Oliver farmers suffer financial hardship after agreeing to salmon enhancement project
by TOM WALKER OLIVER – The return of the
sockeye salmon run to the Okanagan River is an international success story. It’s a feat of environmental restoration that all British Columbians can be proud of, so it’s a travesty to learn that two Oliver farmers were nearly forced into bankruptcy through a mishandling of their water systems and, after seven years, they have yet to receive compensation for their losses. “It’s so marvelous to see the salmon return to the Okanagan,” says Gord Forbes, who with his brother Steve have been working the family’s farm on the river’s banks just north of Oliver for 40 years. “But we never imagined that such a positive project would make a mess out of a simple situation and cause us so much financial hardship.” The “simple situation”
provided water for our organic vegetable farm, and Art’s system gave him water for his orchard.” The Okanagan Basin
Technical Working Group (OBTWG) is a Canada-US multi-government agency that oversees the Okanagan River Restoration Initiative (ORRI). The initiative’s first phase, begun in 2011, was to create spawning habitat along the Okanagan River in front of the Forbes and Dias properties. “OBTWG came and told us that they were going to construct a second channel in the river to link up two old oxbow lakes,” Forbes recalled. “We told them a twin channel would slow the river current down and eventually make the water too shallow for us to pump.” OBTWG told the men it
Gord Forbes looks up the Okanagan River, pointing to a restoration project that created a spawning channel on the left. A gravel bar is forming mid stream where the water used to run much faster. TOM WALKER PHOTO
Forbes refers to involved the systems that pumped water from the river to his farm and that of neighbour Art Dias. The two built and maintained a water pumping stations that worked in harmony with the river. A floating intake that rises and falls with the height of the water was
placed in an area of adequate depth, limiting sediment intake, and was maintained as needed to irrigate the farm’s crops. “A system like that is never perfect,” Forbes points out. “You have to clean it and maintain it, but it has
would install a new water system to prevent any issues – and that’s when the problems started. “What I simply can’t
understand is that through this entire process, the OBTWG completely ignored what we farmers told them and it has cost the taxpayers a lot of money
See RESTORATION on next page o
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