Video and story by Will Koop:
In 1992 logging began in earnest in the District of Peachland's Community Watershed Reserve, with a recent forest tenure license given to Riverside Forest Products (taken over in 2004 by Tolko Industries). Some of the Peachland watershed has a small forest tenure by BC Timber Sales (in the upper Greata sub-basin). Another section of the Peachland Communty watershed is under a Community Forest Tenure (granted in 2009) by the Westbank First Nation. The timelapse, 1984 - 2018, by Google Earth imagery, shows the progression of logging. In 2017, Tolko, BC Timber Sales and the Westbank FIrst Nation began a Watershed Assessment process, which was closed to the public. When the public asked for a copy in late 2018, Tolko and BC Timber Sales refused to release it. The government protected the community watershed in the 1920s with a Land Act tenure, called a Watershed Reserve. Government re-protected the watershed again in 1974 with another Watershed Reserve tenure. The protection tenure was hidden from the public, and when the Okanagan / Shuswap Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) process was underway (1996 - 2000), government hid this tenure from the public working tables. For more information, please visit the BC Tap Water Alliance website, www.bctwa.org, and the Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance website, www.peachlandwpa.org
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