Edmonton Journal
2005.08.19
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Coal mine wins over wildlife in court ruling: Bird habitat, grizzly bears likely be to affected
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EDMONTON - A court ruling on the controversial Cheviot Mine project could spell disaster for wildlife in and around Jasper, local conservationist groups said Thursday.
The Federal Court ruled Wednesday in favour of Cardinal River Coals, which has had plans to build the open pit coal mine a kilometre east of Jasper National Park since the mid-1990s.
The court found that the Canadian
Environmental Assessment Act does not oblige the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans to conduct an environmental assessment of the area, despite significant changes to the mine's design since it received approval in 1999.
Five environmental groups took the case to court.
They alleged the government failed to properly follow its own environmental legislation in evaluating the mining project.
They claimed the changes are detrimental to the surrounding wildlife.
CHEVIOT FOOTPRINT GROWS
The footprint of the Cheviot was expanded to include the adjacent MacLeod River valley, a sensitive bird habitat, and now covers 7,455 hectares. It also includes construction of a haul road between Cheviot and the Luscar Mine, which was scheduled for closure.
The original Cheviot was to be entirely self-sufficient, with coal being mined and processed on-site.
The new design uses the haul road to move coal mined from Cheviot to Luscar for processing.
The road will act as a barrier to the foothills for grizzly bears and could result in some getting run over, Jasper Environmental Association chairwoman Jill Seaton said Thursday.
"The grizzlies like to wander out of the park and into the foothills for many reasons and this road will block them," Seaton said.
"There will be coal trucks flying by there every six to eight minutes."
The original design called for a rail line in the place of the haul road, something that would have cause much less disruption, says Seaton.
GRIZZLIES AND JOBS
The Alberta Wilderness Association called the court ruling a disappointment.
"We felt quite confident that the law would protect this area and support our concerns," said executive director Christyann Olson.
"These habitats will become fragmented and diminished. Animals like the grizzly need that wide open space."
Mine debris that is chipped away to get at the coal deposits will be dumped on bird habitats, completely covering them, said Dianne Pahal, Alberta wilderness director of the Sierra Club of Canada.
"There could be upwards of 5,000 birds affected by this," Pahal said.
When the federal environmental approval was first given, Pahal said the Sierra Club was told the economic benefit of 400 new jobs outweighed the destruction of surrounding habitats.
According to the Sierra Club, Cheviot is employing only 120 workers.
"Now we're really wondering if the job-creation factor still outweighs the loss of the habitats," Pahal said.
Sierra Defence Fund lawyer Justin Duncan, who represents the five groups, said he is not yet sure if the environmentalists coalition will launch a court action in Canada's Federal Court of Appeal.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Sate
my favorote quick summer BBQ meal...perfect with skewers of veggies (red and yellow and orange peppers and zucchini and red onion and mushrooms all tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper)
1 1/2 lbs. pork tenderloin
1/4 c. butter
1 tbsp. lemon juice
grated lemon rind
1/2 tsp. tabasco
3 tbsp. grated onion
3 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 c Indonesian soy
salt & pepper to taste
- cut into 3/4" cubes, place in a shallow dish
- melt butter and add remaining ingredients
- bring to boil, simmer 5 minutes
- pour over meat cover and leave overnight in fridge (turn meat periodically)
- BBQ for 15 mins.
6-8 servings
1 1/2 lbs. pork tenderloin
1/4 c. butter
1 tbsp. lemon juice
grated lemon rind
1/2 tsp. tabasco
3 tbsp. grated onion
3 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 c Indonesian soy
salt & pepper to taste
- cut into 3/4" cubes, place in a shallow dish
- melt butter and add remaining ingredients
- bring to boil, simmer 5 minutes
- pour over meat cover and leave overnight in fridge (turn meat periodically)
- BBQ for 15 mins.
6-8 servings
where i'll be on saturday with our great watershed display
Red Deer Advocate
2005.08.16
Miller, Andrea
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Lakeshore health examined
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As developers prepare to build 238 homes along Sylvan Lake, conservationists are holding the first Healthy Lake Day to protect the waters.
Kent Williamson, president of the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society, said people are prospering in Alberta's hot economy and looking to buy lakeshore property.
"There is a lot of money available for people to buy property. The population around the lake could boom," said Williamson.
Lacombe County has approved five housing subdivisions with 238 homes. Ground work could begin this fall.
Williamson said it's a good time to raise awareness about protecting the lake. All lakeside landowners, including longtime residents, need to think about environmentally friendly practices, he said.
"People may not believe their old septic systems are causing problems, but the effects are cumulative," said Williamson.
"If people know the right thing to do, they will do it. But some just don't want to know."
He hopes people will gain knowledge by attending Healthy Lake Day on Saturday in the Town of Sylvan Lake.
At 10 a.m., consultants Dave Brescia and Elaine Irving will make a presentation about their study into health of the lake and potential effects of development.
The cumulative effects study, completed by AXYS Environmental Consulting for eight municipalities around Sylvan Lake, gives the lake a good rating for water quality and overall health.
But the $150,000 study points to increasing development pressures. It recommends safeguards to keep nutrients out of the lake, such as discouraging people from fertilizing lawns.
The consultants will speak at Lions Hall, 5119 50th Ave. The audience can ask questions, and admission is free.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., there will be free interactive displays, games and brochures at Centennial Park, across the street from the lakeshore.
Conservation and environmental experts from such organizations as Alberta Environment and the Fisheries and Oceans Canada will discuss healthy watersheds.
The events are sponsored by the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society and the Alberta Conservation Association.
2005.08.16
Miller, Andrea
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lakeshore health examined
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As developers prepare to build 238 homes along Sylvan Lake, conservationists are holding the first Healthy Lake Day to protect the waters.
Kent Williamson, president of the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society, said people are prospering in Alberta's hot economy and looking to buy lakeshore property.
"There is a lot of money available for people to buy property. The population around the lake could boom," said Williamson.
Lacombe County has approved five housing subdivisions with 238 homes. Ground work could begin this fall.
Williamson said it's a good time to raise awareness about protecting the lake. All lakeside landowners, including longtime residents, need to think about environmentally friendly practices, he said.
"People may not believe their old septic systems are causing problems, but the effects are cumulative," said Williamson.
"If people know the right thing to do, they will do it. But some just don't want to know."
He hopes people will gain knowledge by attending Healthy Lake Day on Saturday in the Town of Sylvan Lake.
At 10 a.m., consultants Dave Brescia and Elaine Irving will make a presentation about their study into health of the lake and potential effects of development.
The cumulative effects study, completed by AXYS Environmental Consulting for eight municipalities around Sylvan Lake, gives the lake a good rating for water quality and overall health.
But the $150,000 study points to increasing development pressures. It recommends safeguards to keep nutrients out of the lake, such as discouraging people from fertilizing lawns.
The consultants will speak at Lions Hall, 5119 50th Ave. The audience can ask questions, and admission is free.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., there will be free interactive displays, games and brochures at Centennial Park, across the street from the lakeshore.
Conservation and environmental experts from such organizations as Alberta Environment and the Fisheries and Oceans Canada will discuss healthy watersheds.
The events are sponsored by the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society and the Alberta Conservation Association.
Monday, August 15, 2005
opinion piece on watershed management...
Edmonton Journal
2005.08.15
by Jay White
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In the face of a waning water supply, we must rethink how we use it: Watershed management with full public involvement will help Albertans make tough decisions in the future
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Alberta's water usually plays second fiddle to its cousin, black gold, but we are now recognizing that there can be no black gold without water.
Water is the fuel not only of the oil and gas industry, but also of irrigation, agriculture, manufacturing and most other industries, not to mention Alberta's aquatic environments and human survival. The fact that a litre of gas is almost $1 may offend most Albertans, but at that same gas station a litre of water is around $2; perhaps this is truly reflective of the relative value of the two resources.
So how can we justify using eight to 12 barrels of water to produce one barrel of gasoline? Because we give water rights away for free to almost anyone who applies for it.
Perhaps we need to begin thinking differently about water.
In a review of water management practices in 2003, Alberta Environment proposed a whole new way of managing water, with shared responsibility across all departments and with water users and the general public. This vision was adopted by the province in 2004, and called Water for Life: Alberta's Strategy for Sustainability (http://www.waterforlife.gov.ab.ca/).
The provincial government released the Water for Life Strategy in 2004 after much consultation with the public, water users and experts. In short, it is the most comprehensive undertaking in Canada to manage water.
It will identify short-term, medium-term and long-term plans to effectively manage the quantity and quality of the province's water systems and supply.
The Water for Life approach uses the watershed scale for planning and is new, but practical, thinking.
A watershed, or river basin, is the area of land that catches precipitation and drains it into a water body. Alberta has seven major watersheds.
A watershed-scale plan encompasses not just the river, but the activities in the surrounding land.
How is this working so far? Well, Albertans have quickly accepted and adopted the watershed approach to managing water. Working at the watershed scale ensures that we are managing all activities on the landscape -- agriculture, forestry, oil and gas -- and considering their cumulative impact, instead of managing each in isolation.
For example, forestry and oil and gas companies now share roads where previously both would have constructed their own.
Of the seven major river basins in Alberta, three had Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils (WPACs) recognized in 2004: the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance, Bow River Basin Council and Oldman River Basin
Water Quality Initiative. The seven major basins can be viewed online at http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/water/basins/basinform.cfm.
The WPACs are to lead water management planning, develop and promote best management practices, report on the state of the watershed, and promote stewardship and educational activities. Other groups will soon be established for the Milk, Battle, Red Deer, Cold
Lake-Beaver River, Lesser Slave Lake, Athabasca and Peace watersheds.
Even more encouraging is that over 60 different smaller watershed groups have sprung up virtually overnight in an effort to deal with their local issues, on a lake or stream scale. Some of these groups are led by municipalities, while others are led by summer villages, towns or local citizens.
How will this affect water and environmental management in 20 or 30 years?
Scientists tell us the last 100 years in Alberta were the wettest in the past 1,000 years, so Alberta's Centennial celebrations may mark a very wet blip in the province's natural history.
The explosive growth in many parts of the province will continue to strain our water resources. Added to that is our largest challenge: most of the province's water is in the north, while most of the population resides in the south.
We need to think differently about water. There are four actions that every Albertan can do to ensure our future success.
1. Ask questions. Most of us don't think twice about the tap water we drink, or wonder where the water goes when we flush the toilet. Isn't it interesting that many Edmonton and Calgary citizens receive the highest-quality tap water in the world, yet still spend astronomically more on bottled water or in-home water treatment systems?
Remember, the water is free to citizens and business only because they pay only for the treatment and delivery of that water from the utility, not for the water itself.
Do we need treated drinking water to water our lawns and wash our cars? Is that really necessary? Is what we flush down the toilet having an impact on our source water?
Ask questions. Be curious about this resource that so often gets taken for granted. Get educated -- get started at http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/water/index.html.
2. Get involved. Everyone, everywhere in Alberta is in a watershed. There are hundreds of organizations in Alberta involved with water and the environment that could use your help (see: http://www.albertawatersheds.org). Everyone has something to contribute, and your opinions and attitudes are extremely important. Be part of the planning of your local watershed.
3. Look around. Quite often others have faced similar challenges to our own. There are several good examples of water management solutions in other countries, towns or even the watershed next door. In water-stressed Las Vegas, a Cash for Grass program pays $1 per square foot for removing lawns and creating less water-intensive yards and gardens, saving 2.8 billion gallons of water annually.
4. Think differently about water.
It is hard to convince people that there is a shortage of something that they can get from a tap free in their own home, 24 hours a day.
But the reality in Alberta is that several river basins are at their full allocation and that future land development and expansion of industry will be restricted by the availability of water. These limitations are imminent, and each Albertan must think about water, not as incidental to industrial, commercial and personal uses, but rather as the foundation underpinning them all.
Taking to heart the above four suggestions will arm Albertans to make practical and wise decisions about water.
These decisions will be crucial to move forward in the face of waning water supply and quality. Thinking about water differently now will prevent Albertans from having to deal with some of the very difficult water shortage and water quality problems faced by others elsewhere.
Jay White is a biologist who owns Aquality Environmental Consulting and is a member of the Alberta Water Council
2005.08.15
by Jay White
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the face of a waning water supply, we must rethink how we use it: Watershed management with full public involvement will help Albertans make tough decisions in the future
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alberta's water usually plays second fiddle to its cousin, black gold, but we are now recognizing that there can be no black gold without water.
Water is the fuel not only of the oil and gas industry, but also of irrigation, agriculture, manufacturing and most other industries, not to mention Alberta's aquatic environments and human survival. The fact that a litre of gas is almost $1 may offend most Albertans, but at that same gas station a litre of water is around $2; perhaps this is truly reflective of the relative value of the two resources.
So how can we justify using eight to 12 barrels of water to produce one barrel of gasoline? Because we give water rights away for free to almost anyone who applies for it.
Perhaps we need to begin thinking differently about water.
In a review of water management practices in 2003, Alberta Environment proposed a whole new way of managing water, with shared responsibility across all departments and with water users and the general public. This vision was adopted by the province in 2004, and called Water for Life: Alberta's Strategy for Sustainability (http://www.waterforlife.gov.ab.ca/).
The provincial government released the Water for Life Strategy in 2004 after much consultation with the public, water users and experts. In short, it is the most comprehensive undertaking in Canada to manage water.
It will identify short-term, medium-term and long-term plans to effectively manage the quantity and quality of the province's water systems and supply.
The Water for Life approach uses the watershed scale for planning and is new, but practical, thinking.
A watershed, or river basin, is the area of land that catches precipitation and drains it into a water body. Alberta has seven major watersheds.
A watershed-scale plan encompasses not just the river, but the activities in the surrounding land.
How is this working so far? Well, Albertans have quickly accepted and adopted the watershed approach to managing water. Working at the watershed scale ensures that we are managing all activities on the landscape -- agriculture, forestry, oil and gas -- and considering their cumulative impact, instead of managing each in isolation.
For example, forestry and oil and gas companies now share roads where previously both would have constructed their own.
Of the seven major river basins in Alberta, three had Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils (WPACs) recognized in 2004: the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance, Bow River Basin Council and Oldman River Basin
Water Quality Initiative. The seven major basins can be viewed online at http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/water/basins/basinform.cfm.
The WPACs are to lead water management planning, develop and promote best management practices, report on the state of the watershed, and promote stewardship and educational activities. Other groups will soon be established for the Milk, Battle, Red Deer, Cold
Lake-Beaver River, Lesser Slave Lake, Athabasca and Peace watersheds.
Even more encouraging is that over 60 different smaller watershed groups have sprung up virtually overnight in an effort to deal with their local issues, on a lake or stream scale. Some of these groups are led by municipalities, while others are led by summer villages, towns or local citizens.
How will this affect water and environmental management in 20 or 30 years?
Scientists tell us the last 100 years in Alberta were the wettest in the past 1,000 years, so Alberta's Centennial celebrations may mark a very wet blip in the province's natural history.
The explosive growth in many parts of the province will continue to strain our water resources. Added to that is our largest challenge: most of the province's water is in the north, while most of the population resides in the south.
We need to think differently about water. There are four actions that every Albertan can do to ensure our future success.
1. Ask questions. Most of us don't think twice about the tap water we drink, or wonder where the water goes when we flush the toilet. Isn't it interesting that many Edmonton and Calgary citizens receive the highest-quality tap water in the world, yet still spend astronomically more on bottled water or in-home water treatment systems?
Remember, the water is free to citizens and business only because they pay only for the treatment and delivery of that water from the utility, not for the water itself.
Do we need treated drinking water to water our lawns and wash our cars? Is that really necessary? Is what we flush down the toilet having an impact on our source water?
Ask questions. Be curious about this resource that so often gets taken for granted. Get educated -- get started at http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/water/index.html.
2. Get involved. Everyone, everywhere in Alberta is in a watershed. There are hundreds of organizations in Alberta involved with water and the environment that could use your help (see: http://www.albertawatersheds.org). Everyone has something to contribute, and your opinions and attitudes are extremely important. Be part of the planning of your local watershed.
3. Look around. Quite often others have faced similar challenges to our own. There are several good examples of water management solutions in other countries, towns or even the watershed next door. In water-stressed Las Vegas, a Cash for Grass program pays $1 per square foot for removing lawns and creating less water-intensive yards and gardens, saving 2.8 billion gallons of water annually.
4. Think differently about water.
It is hard to convince people that there is a shortage of something that they can get from a tap free in their own home, 24 hours a day.
But the reality in Alberta is that several river basins are at their full allocation and that future land development and expansion of industry will be restricted by the availability of water. These limitations are imminent, and each Albertan must think about water, not as incidental to industrial, commercial and personal uses, but rather as the foundation underpinning them all.
Taking to heart the above four suggestions will arm Albertans to make practical and wise decisions about water.
These decisions will be crucial to move forward in the face of waning water supply and quality. Thinking about water differently now will prevent Albertans from having to deal with some of the very difficult water shortage and water quality problems faced by others elsewhere.
Jay White is a biologist who owns Aquality Environmental Consulting and is a member of the Alberta Water Council
Friday, August 12, 2005
direction...
Downsizing environmental protection
Stephen Magusiak. Pass Herald Reporter (ran May 31st)
The department of fisheries and oceans will be downsized considerably under the new federal budget, to the outrage of the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Friends of the Oldman River.
Due to the department's budget cutbacks, 80 fishery officer positions and 42 habitat management positions will be cut in Canada. This is a worst case scenario, according to officials in the department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories could face up to 56 layoffs.
"The department is still trying to quietly undertake this initiative, reducing both levels of service to Canadians and the level of protection to the aquatic environment." said Martha Kostuch, Vice president of the Friends of the Old man River.
The result of this is the 'modernizing compliance initiative'. Fisheries and Oceans now has to limit its level of service due to budget restrictions, and so, will be changing the way they enforce wildlife protection compliance.
"We want to start taking our resources and using them more towards high risk activities that affect fish habitat" said Phil Jenkins, spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans, "this means not applying as much beaurocracy towards lower risk activities that affect fish habitat. The idea is to try to approach the way we enforce habitat in a more practical risk management framework"
For example, Phil says that if somebody were to build a cottage dock that could affect fish habitat, the department would not apply the same amount of pressure that it would apply to a big highway interchange that could have a serious consequence to fish habitats.
"It doesn't mean total abandonment, it means that we're taking a different approach."
The DFO plans to offset the round of layoffs by hiring 40 new habitat stewardship and monitoring position officers, but these positions will not have the authority to conduct inspections, respond to complaints or enforce the fisheries act, limiting their ability to conserve the aquatic environment.
The Alberta Wilderness Association accuses the federal department of being secretive in implementing the initiative.
"It's no wonder that this is being done in secrecy-it is an affront to the decades of hard work by Canadians who care about their waterways and good public process," says Cliff Wallis, AWA Past President and President of Friends of the Oldman River. "we need to strengthen, not weaken, our enforcement capacity and funding for conserving fish habitat."
The federal budget requires all government departments to find resources that could be re-allocated. Fisheries and Oceans has to reduce expenditures by $7 million by the 2007-2008 fiscal year.
Exactly how this will affect Alberta is still unknown by the DFO, but considerable layoffs are likely. the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Friends of the Old Man River are concerned that the door will be open for the destruction of fish habitat, but the DFO officials say that they will not be turning a blind eye towards those who knowingly destroy fish habitat. Enforcement of such offenses, however, remains a concern.
Stephen Magusiak. Pass Herald Reporter (ran May 31st)
The department of fisheries and oceans will be downsized considerably under the new federal budget, to the outrage of the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Friends of the Oldman River.
Due to the department's budget cutbacks, 80 fishery officer positions and 42 habitat management positions will be cut in Canada. This is a worst case scenario, according to officials in the department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories could face up to 56 layoffs.
"The department is still trying to quietly undertake this initiative, reducing both levels of service to Canadians and the level of protection to the aquatic environment." said Martha Kostuch, Vice president of the Friends of the Old man River.
The result of this is the 'modernizing compliance initiative'. Fisheries and Oceans now has to limit its level of service due to budget restrictions, and so, will be changing the way they enforce wildlife protection compliance.
"We want to start taking our resources and using them more towards high risk activities that affect fish habitat" said Phil Jenkins, spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans, "this means not applying as much beaurocracy towards lower risk activities that affect fish habitat. The idea is to try to approach the way we enforce habitat in a more practical risk management framework"
For example, Phil says that if somebody were to build a cottage dock that could affect fish habitat, the department would not apply the same amount of pressure that it would apply to a big highway interchange that could have a serious consequence to fish habitats.
"It doesn't mean total abandonment, it means that we're taking a different approach."
The DFO plans to offset the round of layoffs by hiring 40 new habitat stewardship and monitoring position officers, but these positions will not have the authority to conduct inspections, respond to complaints or enforce the fisheries act, limiting their ability to conserve the aquatic environment.
The Alberta Wilderness Association accuses the federal department of being secretive in implementing the initiative.
"It's no wonder that this is being done in secrecy-it is an affront to the decades of hard work by Canadians who care about their waterways and good public process," says Cliff Wallis, AWA Past President and President of Friends of the Oldman River. "we need to strengthen, not weaken, our enforcement capacity and funding for conserving fish habitat."
The federal budget requires all government departments to find resources that could be re-allocated. Fisheries and Oceans has to reduce expenditures by $7 million by the 2007-2008 fiscal year.
Exactly how this will affect Alberta is still unknown by the DFO, but considerable layoffs are likely. the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Friends of the Old Man River are concerned that the door will be open for the destruction of fish habitat, but the DFO officials say that they will not be turning a blind eye towards those who knowingly destroy fish habitat. Enforcement of such offenses, however, remains a concern.
Nathalie Parentheau
I love her art - especially these mooses! She currently lives in the Yukon and was once a biologist - the link to her website is on the sidebar...
Thursday, August 11, 2005
striking the mandatory pose
A great day at work...while electrofishing, we caught a 65 cm male bull trout getting ready to impress the ladies (and looking a little skinny after a tough summer in the river). We also found quite a few smaller trout and longnose dace in there too - it is amazing how much the river has changed after the floods but those fish are tough...
Fish & Floods & Trees
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Silty river water puts trout at risk
Calgary Herald
2005.06.24
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Silty floodwater churning in the swollen Bow River is choking fish and threatening the famed trout population. The mixture of hard rain and mountain spring runoff has muddied up the water, and only one in 10 river trout has a chance to survive, Ald. Barry Erskine estimates.
"A lot of people don't realize the environmental impact of this flood -- it has changed our river environment extensively." The murky water will suffocate the fish, said Erskine, a biologist. "This has been continuous for weeks. The silt plugs up their gills. "The Bow River south of the city is the No. 1 trout fishery in the world. Anglers come from all over the world to catch trophy trout," he said.
But biologists say local fish populations will thrive in the long run because the recent deluge has flushed out litter and weeds from riverbeds, creating ideal habitat for fish to lay eggs.
Trevor Rhodes, head of fisheries management in the southeast of the province for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, said fish populations aren't expected to plummet. That's because fish "literally don't put all their eggs in one basket" and not all eggs and hatchlings have been washed away, he said.
Calgary biologist Brian Meagher said species that spawn in the spring, such as rainbow and cutthroat trout, will be affected by a loss of food and habitat in the short-term. But the bright side, he said, is the raging waters have scoured the riverbed and created pristine spawning conditions.
"It's just like a forest fire coming through the water. Forests need fires to regenerate; that's basically the equivalent," said Meagher, who works for the Calgary-based conservation organization Trout Unlimited Canada. "There will be a lot of new spawning habitat created."
Bow seen as sign of problems
By Quintin Winks
Tuesday June 21, 2005
Banff Crag & Canyon — Through decades of mismanagement, the health of the Bow River from the headwaters down is very poor, impacting the health of the whole river valley ecosystem.
That diagnosis was delivered by Dan Bell, a longtime Banff fisherman who warns that the health of the river could get worse. The worse it gets, the harder it is to recover, he said.
Bell blames the state of the river on a number of factors. The two biggest impacts on the river in the past century have been the introduction of non-native fish species, which either eat native fish or outcompete them for food, and the damming of the Spray and Cascade rivers. Water from the dams is released from the bottom and is very cold, too cold to support fish fry, said Bell.
Dams have also interrupted river flows. The one at Minnewanka eliminated the Cascade River and its fish habitat. Meanwhile, highways and railroads through the valley have created barriers to fish movement, said Bell.
The resulting drop in fish populations means less high-protein food for local bears and less fish roe -- a source of nutrients to birds and other fish. “What scientists found in Yellowstone (National Park, Wyoming) was that when they brought back the natural fish populations in the 1980s, for the first time grizzlies were feeding on cutthroat trout,” said Bell. “Now they have about 90 bears feeding on the cutthroat trout and a large proportion of the bears are lactating moms. That increases the survival rate of the cubs because the fish is a good source of protein and lipids.”
In contrast, Banff in the 1970s saw a severe reduction in fish-stocking operations and fisheries aquatic management, said Bell. “What we need is to get some attention paid to the river,” Bell continued. “I think Parks should increase funding for aquatics. I think there should be a lot more emphasis on funding research and restoration of the upper Bow River system. If we continue on this course I think we will end up with a non-native river population that’s not in tune with the environment."
Another longtime local, Ray Haimila, remembers a time as a boy when he watched his father fish in the Bow River. Though he’s not a fisherman, Haimila has noticed some big changes in the quality of fishing since those days.
“When we were young the river would get black with fish, especially in the spring and the fall with the migrations,” he said. “You could catch thousands of fish if you wanted to, there was just that many fish in the river.”
While the numerous factors of the past have likely had an effect on fish populations in the river, siltation is the latest culprit in stunting fish numbers and sizes.
Haimila and Bell agree that silt stirred up by highway and railway construction and mud slides, as well as ash in the water from forest fires, kills off a lot of the insect larvae -- a principal food source for fish.
Ian Syme, chief park warden of the Banff Field Unit, lays the blame elsewhere. Banff’s new wastewater treatment plant is more efficient, which means less nutrients are released into the river. Less nutrients means less food for the fish, said Syme, who had a “wide-ranging discussion about the state of the Bow River” with an aquatics advisory committee last spring. The committee included stakeholders from industry, fishing guides, local fishermen, local fisheries specialists and university professors from the University of Calgary, said Syme.
“Without doing a fairly significant study, saying why the fish below Banff aren’t there anymore, why the bugs aren’t there anymore is…probably everybody is doing some form of guesswork on why they’re not there,” said Syme. “A significant amount of research was done on water quality related to the new waste-water treatment facilities in Banff and Lake Louise and part of the environmental assessment for those indicated there would very likely be issues with bug populations downstream and thus fish populations.
I’m not going to say that’s the only reason, but we did have some science a few years ago that this was going to be an outcome.”
While Syme laid most of the blame on the new sewage treatment facility, Bell said that’s simplifying the problem. According to Bell, the insects are returning and if it were a sewage issue, the bugs would remain scarce.
“The sewage is a factor, but golden and brown stoneflies and green drake mayflies are coming back,” he said. “I’m happy they’re cleaning up sewage, but then the drop in bugs would be permanent. The bugs are rebounding now from the slides. The bottom line is in July we’ll see if the bugs are coming around. Siltation is affecting the insects. We haven’t been monitoring and taking care of the rivers."
While Dr. Bruce Leeson, senior environmental assessment scientist for the Western Canada Service Centre for Parks Canada, agrees that siltation is harmful, he questions whether highway and railway construction is entirely to blame.
“I agree that most of the tributaries to the Bow River have been impacted by the Trans-Canada Highway and the Bow Valley Parkway or the CPR line,” he said. “But it might be arguable whether that has increased or decreased siltation because in some cases, such as Firesite Creek, at a place we call Five-Mile, there are recurrent major outbursts every few years and the Trans-Canada Highway and CP Rail are significant in preventing that material from reaching the Bow River.”
While the highways and railways might restrict the amount of silt finding its way into the Bow River, they also can restrict fish from reaching their spawning grounds, said Sheena Majewski, a fish habitat biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The good news is that’s changing. Soil underneath older culverts, which were installed to allow water to flow under berms and other man-made structures, would erode over time and leave the culverts hanging in air. That made it very difficult for fish to swim up river, said Majewski.
“We have found some of the impacts come from fish not being able to cross the roadways to their spawning tributaries,” she said. “That’s an issue that causes an impact on productivity and that’s being addressed with the TCH twinning. There’s been a couple of projects within the park to retrofit some of these hanging culverts with stone ramps to address the fish migration. In Jasper, bull trout went into spawning areas as soon as a culvert was fixed.
Though Bell said he has been complaining to Parks “for a long time,” it would appear as though he is finally being heard. Dave Evans, a fish habitat biologist for Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the agency is waiting for the current high levels of river water to subside before it launches an investigation into the whether or not fish population in the park is up or down and the reasons for the changes.
“Most of the information is several years old now,” said Evans, who corroborated many of Bell’s concerns. “So we’re trying to get some updated information to get a sense for what’s actually going on up there. We’re actually trying to get some scientific background information on what is going up there as result of some of the concerns that have been raised.”
The DFO will investigate the impact of the nutrient reductions in the rivers, increased siltation and whether big rocks and cobbles from the mountains are being blocked from entering the rivers by roads and railways. The success of non-native species at the expense of native species will also be studied, said Evans.
“These are very complex systems and it’s very hard to put your finger on one issue, one problem,” he said. “It’s usually not just one problem, nor one particular point in time. A lot of these things accumulate over years.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearcut practices linked to flooding
Red Deer Advocate
2005.06.23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearcut logging on the Eastern Slopes could have contributed to the deluge-like runoff that flooded rivers in Central Alberta this week, says an environmental scientist.
Dixon Thompson, professor of environmental science at the University of Calgary, said "scientific literature has pretty much established that forests help slow the flow of runoff from rain and snow melt.
"Removing vegetation certainly has impact," said Thompson. He referred to a controversial proposal in the Three Rivers Dam area to clearcut trees as a way of increasing water flow.
Thompson considers the loss of trees to be just one contributing factor. But he believes the province should review its logging policies in the light of more extreme weather events.
While Environment Minister Guy Boutilier called last weekend's flood a one-in-200-year occurrence, Thompson noted that a flood on the Oldman River in the mid-1990s was also given that description. "And 10 years later, there's another one? Clearly this is not a 200-year event."
Many scientists link the Earth's climate change to the thinning of the ozone. This means more of the sun's energy is captured in the atmosphere, said Thompson, "and this energy will do something."
Thompson is particularly concerned about clearcut logging close to the headwaters of rivers and tributaries. "Yes, there are jobs and economic benefits, but that might be offset by all the expenses incurred by this kind of event," he said.
But Alberta Sustainable Resources spokesman Michel Proulx said the province already takes water yields into account when looking at timber harvesting plans.
A Yale University study last year concluded that Alberta had some of the best forestry practices in the developed world, Proulx added.
"Our rules are pretty conservative... . We think we have a good forest management strategy the way it is."
As to climate change, Proulx said timber harvesting policies in Alberta are reviewed on a regular basis. "If things need to be changed, then they will get changed."
But he doesn't believe this is necessary now. He noted forestry cutblocks are always replanted so they are in various stages of regrowth.
Rocky Mountain House environmentalist Martha Kostuch still worries about a provincial proposal to log and controlled burn protected areas of Big Horn Country, which contain headwaters of some rivers and streams.
"They are calling it forest fire protection," said Kostuch, but she believes it will do more harm than good.
As to the weekend flooding, Kostuch believes many parts of Central Alberta would have inevitably been covered in water, since much rain fell on the Eastern Slopes, "but it probably wouldn't have been as severe if we hadn't allowed so much clearcutting," she added.
Dianne Pachal of the Sierra Club describes trees as natural sponges. Water is soaked up by their roots, as well as the surrounding soils and vegetation. "They release runoff slower... . Once you start clearcutting a forest wider than the height of the trees, you will be having an adverse affect on its ability to act like a sponge."
She urged concerned Albertans to speak up, since the government is now taking public comments on the fire protection plan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alberta flooding wipes out trout and parkland, but riverbeds will rejuvenate
2005.06.22
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CALGARY (CP) _ Alberta's devastating spring floods have wiped out much of the trout in the world-renowned Bow River and biologists suggest the fishing outlook is probably crippled for this year.
But they also say flooding is nature's way of regenerating river habitat and that will be good news in the long run.
``The fish that spawned this year are likely washed out,'' said Brian Meagher, a biologist with Trout Unlimited, who surveyed the disaster from the air Wednesday.
``As well, all of the small fish that were born last year are probably either in severe trouble or they're done _ that's the problem for this year,'' said Meagher.
``But in the long-term, it's a good thing because it's going to clear up the river system. It will clear out a lot of the weeds in the river, clear out a lot of debris and expose new spawning grounds for the future.''
Two weeks of heavy rain and widespread flooding has left many parts of southern and central Alberta looking like disaster zones. Coursing water has washed out bridges and roads, cut new pathways for many rivers and creeks and left a new footprint for many properties.
There have been human casualties too _ a truck driver is presumed drowned after his truck smashed through guardrail on a bridge to avoid hitting slow traffic stopping to gawk at the rising Red Deer River near Drumheller.
Calgary police called off a search for a 15-year-old girl who has been missing since the weekend. She was last heard from when she made a call from her cellphone while walking home and said the water was up to her knees.
Extensive damage to Fish Creek Provincial Park, Canada's largest urban park, will take years for the vegetation to recover. But manager Jim Stomp says the park's landscape will never look the same, noting that 40 per cent of the 110 kilometres of pathways have been wiped out. Another 25 per cent require major repairs.
``A lot of the (pedestrian) bridges were totally removed, the abutments are gone and the banks they were sitting on are no longer there,'' said Stomp. ``And the banks, in some cases, are perhaps 40 feet wider than they were before.''
Each year, between 2.5 and 3 million people visit Fish Creek, a vast swath of forested area at Calgary's deep southern tip.
Prime Minister Paul Martin will be in the province Friday to view some of the devastation. Preliminary estimates suggest damage could soar above $200 million and the province will be seeking federal aid to help with those bills.
Although most of those forced to flee due to the raging waters have been able to return to their homes, some Calgary evacuees could be out three months. Electrical damage to one of the apartment buildings backing onto the Elbow River is so extensive that it will take at least that long to repair _ if the building can be salvaged at all.
Pools of standing water from the flooding and heavy rainfall could create another headache: a big increase in the nuisance mosquito population.
But it will take lots of hot, dry weather to form proper conditions for Culex tarsalis, the type of mosquito most likely to transmit West Nile virus, said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, an Alberta deputy provincial health officer.
``If we are left now with hot, dry weather and this water starts to collect in little pools as it evaporates, that would mean we would see more of the Culex mosquitoes that are responsible for West Nile,'' Grimsrud said.
Many Albertans have been basking under brilliant blue skies in recent days as temperatures soared into the high 20s for the beginning of summer.
There are some positive environmental aspects to the flooding.
Biologist Vivian Pharis of the Alberta Wilderness Association said the rush of water will help the riverbottom cottonwood forests in southern Alberta, which require flooding to promote growth.
``The cottonwood forests are going to be happier_ maybe we'll see some resprouting and new growth there,'' said Pharis.
In and around the Oldman River basin, near Lethbridge and Pincher Creek, the cottonwoods are the main forest in the riverbed and supply habitat for a variety of birds, snakes and a range of other wildlife.
Damming along the Oldman River has reduced flooding in recent years and the trees have been struggling for survival, says Pharis.
Silty river water puts trout at risk
Calgary Herald
2005.06.24
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silty floodwater churning in the swollen Bow River is choking fish and threatening the famed trout population. The mixture of hard rain and mountain spring runoff has muddied up the water, and only one in 10 river trout has a chance to survive, Ald. Barry Erskine estimates.
"A lot of people don't realize the environmental impact of this flood -- it has changed our river environment extensively." The murky water will suffocate the fish, said Erskine, a biologist. "This has been continuous for weeks. The silt plugs up their gills. "The Bow River south of the city is the No. 1 trout fishery in the world. Anglers come from all over the world to catch trophy trout," he said.
But biologists say local fish populations will thrive in the long run because the recent deluge has flushed out litter and weeds from riverbeds, creating ideal habitat for fish to lay eggs.
Trevor Rhodes, head of fisheries management in the southeast of the province for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, said fish populations aren't expected to plummet. That's because fish "literally don't put all their eggs in one basket" and not all eggs and hatchlings have been washed away, he said.
Calgary biologist Brian Meagher said species that spawn in the spring, such as rainbow and cutthroat trout, will be affected by a loss of food and habitat in the short-term. But the bright side, he said, is the raging waters have scoured the riverbed and created pristine spawning conditions.
"It's just like a forest fire coming through the water. Forests need fires to regenerate; that's basically the equivalent," said Meagher, who works for the Calgary-based conservation organization Trout Unlimited Canada. "There will be a lot of new spawning habitat created."
Bow seen as sign of problems
By Quintin Winks
Tuesday June 21, 2005
Banff Crag & Canyon — Through decades of mismanagement, the health of the Bow River from the headwaters down is very poor, impacting the health of the whole river valley ecosystem.
That diagnosis was delivered by Dan Bell, a longtime Banff fisherman who warns that the health of the river could get worse. The worse it gets, the harder it is to recover, he said.
Bell blames the state of the river on a number of factors. The two biggest impacts on the river in the past century have been the introduction of non-native fish species, which either eat native fish or outcompete them for food, and the damming of the Spray and Cascade rivers. Water from the dams is released from the bottom and is very cold, too cold to support fish fry, said Bell.
Dams have also interrupted river flows. The one at Minnewanka eliminated the Cascade River and its fish habitat. Meanwhile, highways and railroads through the valley have created barriers to fish movement, said Bell.
The resulting drop in fish populations means less high-protein food for local bears and less fish roe -- a source of nutrients to birds and other fish. “What scientists found in Yellowstone (National Park, Wyoming) was that when they brought back the natural fish populations in the 1980s, for the first time grizzlies were feeding on cutthroat trout,” said Bell. “Now they have about 90 bears feeding on the cutthroat trout and a large proportion of the bears are lactating moms. That increases the survival rate of the cubs because the fish is a good source of protein and lipids.”
In contrast, Banff in the 1970s saw a severe reduction in fish-stocking operations and fisheries aquatic management, said Bell. “What we need is to get some attention paid to the river,” Bell continued. “I think Parks should increase funding for aquatics. I think there should be a lot more emphasis on funding research and restoration of the upper Bow River system. If we continue on this course I think we will end up with a non-native river population that’s not in tune with the environment."
Another longtime local, Ray Haimila, remembers a time as a boy when he watched his father fish in the Bow River. Though he’s not a fisherman, Haimila has noticed some big changes in the quality of fishing since those days.
“When we were young the river would get black with fish, especially in the spring and the fall with the migrations,” he said. “You could catch thousands of fish if you wanted to, there was just that many fish in the river.”
While the numerous factors of the past have likely had an effect on fish populations in the river, siltation is the latest culprit in stunting fish numbers and sizes.
Haimila and Bell agree that silt stirred up by highway and railway construction and mud slides, as well as ash in the water from forest fires, kills off a lot of the insect larvae -- a principal food source for fish.
Ian Syme, chief park warden of the Banff Field Unit, lays the blame elsewhere. Banff’s new wastewater treatment plant is more efficient, which means less nutrients are released into the river. Less nutrients means less food for the fish, said Syme, who had a “wide-ranging discussion about the state of the Bow River” with an aquatics advisory committee last spring. The committee included stakeholders from industry, fishing guides, local fishermen, local fisheries specialists and university professors from the University of Calgary, said Syme.
“Without doing a fairly significant study, saying why the fish below Banff aren’t there anymore, why the bugs aren’t there anymore is…probably everybody is doing some form of guesswork on why they’re not there,” said Syme. “A significant amount of research was done on water quality related to the new waste-water treatment facilities in Banff and Lake Louise and part of the environmental assessment for those indicated there would very likely be issues with bug populations downstream and thus fish populations.
I’m not going to say that’s the only reason, but we did have some science a few years ago that this was going to be an outcome.”
While Syme laid most of the blame on the new sewage treatment facility, Bell said that’s simplifying the problem. According to Bell, the insects are returning and if it were a sewage issue, the bugs would remain scarce.
“The sewage is a factor, but golden and brown stoneflies and green drake mayflies are coming back,” he said. “I’m happy they’re cleaning up sewage, but then the drop in bugs would be permanent. The bugs are rebounding now from the slides. The bottom line is in July we’ll see if the bugs are coming around. Siltation is affecting the insects. We haven’t been monitoring and taking care of the rivers."
While Dr. Bruce Leeson, senior environmental assessment scientist for the Western Canada Service Centre for Parks Canada, agrees that siltation is harmful, he questions whether highway and railway construction is entirely to blame.
“I agree that most of the tributaries to the Bow River have been impacted by the Trans-Canada Highway and the Bow Valley Parkway or the CPR line,” he said. “But it might be arguable whether that has increased or decreased siltation because in some cases, such as Firesite Creek, at a place we call Five-Mile, there are recurrent major outbursts every few years and the Trans-Canada Highway and CP Rail are significant in preventing that material from reaching the Bow River.”
While the highways and railways might restrict the amount of silt finding its way into the Bow River, they also can restrict fish from reaching their spawning grounds, said Sheena Majewski, a fish habitat biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The good news is that’s changing. Soil underneath older culverts, which were installed to allow water to flow under berms and other man-made structures, would erode over time and leave the culverts hanging in air. That made it very difficult for fish to swim up river, said Majewski.
“We have found some of the impacts come from fish not being able to cross the roadways to their spawning tributaries,” she said. “That’s an issue that causes an impact on productivity and that’s being addressed with the TCH twinning. There’s been a couple of projects within the park to retrofit some of these hanging culverts with stone ramps to address the fish migration. In Jasper, bull trout went into spawning areas as soon as a culvert was fixed.
Though Bell said he has been complaining to Parks “for a long time,” it would appear as though he is finally being heard. Dave Evans, a fish habitat biologist for Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the agency is waiting for the current high levels of river water to subside before it launches an investigation into the whether or not fish population in the park is up or down and the reasons for the changes.
“Most of the information is several years old now,” said Evans, who corroborated many of Bell’s concerns. “So we’re trying to get some updated information to get a sense for what’s actually going on up there. We’re actually trying to get some scientific background information on what is going up there as result of some of the concerns that have been raised.”
The DFO will investigate the impact of the nutrient reductions in the rivers, increased siltation and whether big rocks and cobbles from the mountains are being blocked from entering the rivers by roads and railways. The success of non-native species at the expense of native species will also be studied, said Evans.
“These are very complex systems and it’s very hard to put your finger on one issue, one problem,” he said. “It’s usually not just one problem, nor one particular point in time. A lot of these things accumulate over years.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearcut practices linked to flooding
Red Deer Advocate
2005.06.23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearcut logging on the Eastern Slopes could have contributed to the deluge-like runoff that flooded rivers in Central Alberta this week, says an environmental scientist.
Dixon Thompson, professor of environmental science at the University of Calgary, said "scientific literature has pretty much established that forests help slow the flow of runoff from rain and snow melt.
"Removing vegetation certainly has impact," said Thompson. He referred to a controversial proposal in the Three Rivers Dam area to clearcut trees as a way of increasing water flow.
Thompson considers the loss of trees to be just one contributing factor. But he believes the province should review its logging policies in the light of more extreme weather events.
While Environment Minister Guy Boutilier called last weekend's flood a one-in-200-year occurrence, Thompson noted that a flood on the Oldman River in the mid-1990s was also given that description. "And 10 years later, there's another one? Clearly this is not a 200-year event."
Many scientists link the Earth's climate change to the thinning of the ozone. This means more of the sun's energy is captured in the atmosphere, said Thompson, "and this energy will do something."
Thompson is particularly concerned about clearcut logging close to the headwaters of rivers and tributaries. "Yes, there are jobs and economic benefits, but that might be offset by all the expenses incurred by this kind of event," he said.
But Alberta Sustainable Resources spokesman Michel Proulx said the province already takes water yields into account when looking at timber harvesting plans.
A Yale University study last year concluded that Alberta had some of the best forestry practices in the developed world, Proulx added.
"Our rules are pretty conservative... . We think we have a good forest management strategy the way it is."
As to climate change, Proulx said timber harvesting policies in Alberta are reviewed on a regular basis. "If things need to be changed, then they will get changed."
But he doesn't believe this is necessary now. He noted forestry cutblocks are always replanted so they are in various stages of regrowth.
Rocky Mountain House environmentalist Martha Kostuch still worries about a provincial proposal to log and controlled burn protected areas of Big Horn Country, which contain headwaters of some rivers and streams.
"They are calling it forest fire protection," said Kostuch, but she believes it will do more harm than good.
As to the weekend flooding, Kostuch believes many parts of Central Alberta would have inevitably been covered in water, since much rain fell on the Eastern Slopes, "but it probably wouldn't have been as severe if we hadn't allowed so much clearcutting," she added.
Dianne Pachal of the Sierra Club describes trees as natural sponges. Water is soaked up by their roots, as well as the surrounding soils and vegetation. "They release runoff slower... . Once you start clearcutting a forest wider than the height of the trees, you will be having an adverse affect on its ability to act like a sponge."
She urged concerned Albertans to speak up, since the government is now taking public comments on the fire protection plan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alberta flooding wipes out trout and parkland, but riverbeds will rejuvenate
2005.06.22
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CALGARY (CP) _ Alberta's devastating spring floods have wiped out much of the trout in the world-renowned Bow River and biologists suggest the fishing outlook is probably crippled for this year.
But they also say flooding is nature's way of regenerating river habitat and that will be good news in the long run.
``The fish that spawned this year are likely washed out,'' said Brian Meagher, a biologist with Trout Unlimited, who surveyed the disaster from the air Wednesday.
``As well, all of the small fish that were born last year are probably either in severe trouble or they're done _ that's the problem for this year,'' said Meagher.
``But in the long-term, it's a good thing because it's going to clear up the river system. It will clear out a lot of the weeds in the river, clear out a lot of debris and expose new spawning grounds for the future.''
Two weeks of heavy rain and widespread flooding has left many parts of southern and central Alberta looking like disaster zones. Coursing water has washed out bridges and roads, cut new pathways for many rivers and creeks and left a new footprint for many properties.
There have been human casualties too _ a truck driver is presumed drowned after his truck smashed through guardrail on a bridge to avoid hitting slow traffic stopping to gawk at the rising Red Deer River near Drumheller.
Calgary police called off a search for a 15-year-old girl who has been missing since the weekend. She was last heard from when she made a call from her cellphone while walking home and said the water was up to her knees.
Extensive damage to Fish Creek Provincial Park, Canada's largest urban park, will take years for the vegetation to recover. But manager Jim Stomp says the park's landscape will never look the same, noting that 40 per cent of the 110 kilometres of pathways have been wiped out. Another 25 per cent require major repairs.
``A lot of the (pedestrian) bridges were totally removed, the abutments are gone and the banks they were sitting on are no longer there,'' said Stomp. ``And the banks, in some cases, are perhaps 40 feet wider than they were before.''
Each year, between 2.5 and 3 million people visit Fish Creek, a vast swath of forested area at Calgary's deep southern tip.
Prime Minister Paul Martin will be in the province Friday to view some of the devastation. Preliminary estimates suggest damage could soar above $200 million and the province will be seeking federal aid to help with those bills.
Although most of those forced to flee due to the raging waters have been able to return to their homes, some Calgary evacuees could be out three months. Electrical damage to one of the apartment buildings backing onto the Elbow River is so extensive that it will take at least that long to repair _ if the building can be salvaged at all.
Pools of standing water from the flooding and heavy rainfall could create another headache: a big increase in the nuisance mosquito population.
But it will take lots of hot, dry weather to form proper conditions for Culex tarsalis, the type of mosquito most likely to transmit West Nile virus, said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, an Alberta deputy provincial health officer.
``If we are left now with hot, dry weather and this water starts to collect in little pools as it evaporates, that would mean we would see more of the Culex mosquitoes that are responsible for West Nile,'' Grimsrud said.
Many Albertans have been basking under brilliant blue skies in recent days as temperatures soared into the high 20s for the beginning of summer.
There are some positive environmental aspects to the flooding.
Biologist Vivian Pharis of the Alberta Wilderness Association said the rush of water will help the riverbottom cottonwood forests in southern Alberta, which require flooding to promote growth.
``The cottonwood forests are going to be happier_ maybe we'll see some resprouting and new growth there,'' said Pharis.
In and around the Oldman River basin, near Lethbridge and Pincher Creek, the cottonwoods are the main forest in the riverbed and supply habitat for a variety of birds, snakes and a range of other wildlife.
Damming along the Oldman River has reduced flooding in recent years and the trees have been struggling for survival, says Pharis.
Water Management
it will be interesting to see the direction of watershed planning in Alberta over the next few years - some critical issues coming to a head...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bow River trip a call for action
Calgary Herald
2005.07.18
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bow River may be high now but unless we leave more water in place, dry years will hit the river hard, says a local river watch group.
"We've maxed out the river," said Bow Riverkeeper Danielle Droitsch. "And in low water years, that will place extreme pressures on the river itself."
Droitsch is floating more than 600 kilometres by canoe with several companions, stopping in communities along the way to highlight challenges facing the river's health. She heads the local chapter of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international non-profit group dedicated to protecting the world's supply of freshwater.
The group started at the Wapta Icefield on June 27 and will be floating through Calgary this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Droitsch is calling on the provincial government to decrease the amount of water that users are allowed to withdraw from the Bow by bringing in a market system for water or by holding back part of established water allocations, some of which were assigned as far back as the early 1900s when water seemed unlimited.
"We need to recognize the true value of water," she said, "and we need to recognize that the river has basic needs."
Robert Moyles, spokesman for Alberta Environment, said the government has been working hard to draw stakeholders together and analyse the health of the river.
The Bow River Basin Council, a 31-member stakeholder committee, will release its next report this fall, said Moyles.
The group is studying how much water is currently being used and projecting needs into the future, making some hard management choices in the process, Moyles said.
Market-based systems and water holdbacks are all on the table.
Limiting water is hard because water is essential for farming in southern Alberta, said Dave Cholka, water controller with the Bow River Irrigation District.
Irrigators are the largest users of water on the Bow River.
In recent years, they've expanded production, said Cholka, not by demanding any more water, but only through using water more efficiently.
Even with improvements, they always keep one eye on the clouds.
"Having the water when you want it, that's the concern," he said. "If you have a really dry year, any river would be over-allocated."
The canoe team will be heading into the irrigation district shortly after they leave Calgary and will be keeping their eyes open for pollution or problems with the riverbanks, said Jim Kievit, lead paddler for the trip.
"We're just paddling along and having a look," he said, adding that the trip has been going well so far.
"The river is high but not extreme. We're going along at a pretty good clip."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bow River trip a call for action
Calgary Herald
2005.07.18
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bow River may be high now but unless we leave more water in place, dry years will hit the river hard, says a local river watch group.
"We've maxed out the river," said Bow Riverkeeper Danielle Droitsch. "And in low water years, that will place extreme pressures on the river itself."
Droitsch is floating more than 600 kilometres by canoe with several companions, stopping in communities along the way to highlight challenges facing the river's health. She heads the local chapter of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international non-profit group dedicated to protecting the world's supply of freshwater.
The group started at the Wapta Icefield on June 27 and will be floating through Calgary this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Droitsch is calling on the provincial government to decrease the amount of water that users are allowed to withdraw from the Bow by bringing in a market system for water or by holding back part of established water allocations, some of which were assigned as far back as the early 1900s when water seemed unlimited.
"We need to recognize the true value of water," she said, "and we need to recognize that the river has basic needs."
Robert Moyles, spokesman for Alberta Environment, said the government has been working hard to draw stakeholders together and analyse the health of the river.
The Bow River Basin Council, a 31-member stakeholder committee, will release its next report this fall, said Moyles.
The group is studying how much water is currently being used and projecting needs into the future, making some hard management choices in the process, Moyles said.
Market-based systems and water holdbacks are all on the table.
Limiting water is hard because water is essential for farming in southern Alberta, said Dave Cholka, water controller with the Bow River Irrigation District.
Irrigators are the largest users of water on the Bow River.
In recent years, they've expanded production, said Cholka, not by demanding any more water, but only through using water more efficiently.
Even with improvements, they always keep one eye on the clouds.
"Having the water when you want it, that's the concern," he said. "If you have a really dry year, any river would be over-allocated."
The canoe team will be heading into the irrigation district shortly after they leave Calgary and will be keeping their eyes open for pollution or problems with the riverbanks, said Jim Kievit, lead paddler for the trip.
"We're just paddling along and having a look," he said, adding that the trip has been going well so far.
"The river is high but not extreme. We're going along at a pretty good clip."
Wabamun Mess
a big summer for water issues in Alberta continues...
Wabamun water results expected today
Last updated Aug 11 2005 09:14 AM MDT
CBC News
Wabamun Lake residents expect to hear Thursday what damage a hazardous oil caused when it leaked into the water during last week's train derailment.
Test results from the lake and surrounding wells will be available, Alberta Environment says, after it confirmed Wednesday that one of 43 cars that went off the rails Aug. 3 contained an oil used to treat utility poles – a compound that has been linked to skin cancer.
Aerial view of Wabamun Lake, covered in bunker fuel oil.
The news that one of the CN cars was carrying a hazardous substance came to light four days after the derailment, when Alberta Environment officials noticed a green substance at the site, suspecting it was a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon used to preserve wood.
The car was carrying 70,000 litres of the oil.
Initially, it was believed that only bunker fuel oil, a heavy oil used in asphalt production and to power ships, spilled into the lake. Crews are still trying to contain and clean up more than 750,000 litres of the oil on the lake's surface.
CN Rail admitted this week that they'd known since Thursday that one of the derailed cars was carrying the pole-treating oil.
"That inaction's just made a situation which was bad incredibly bad," Doug Goss, spokesman for Wabamun residents and cottagers, said. "Now they're trying to play catch up on it. It's the best they can do with an incredibly bad situation.
"But they're the authors of that bad situation. We're all frustrated and still, I think, very angry."
CN spokesman Jim Feeny denied allegations that the company deliberately withheld the information, saying CN had worked hard to get details out quickly as it began to clean up the mess.
"CN would never purposely withhold information relating to public safety, but obviously we have an issue here with the specific information about this one specific car, about the contents of this one specific car," he said, adding CN officials are trying to determine who received the information and why it wasn't immediately passed on.
"Obviously there's been a disconnect here. We do know that there was a problem, that the information did not get to everyone who needed it."
The pole-treating oil was listed as lube oil on the shipping manifest, a general term used to describe the product.
Last Wednesday morning, 43 or 140 rail cars on a train travelling from Edmonton to Vancouver went off the rails as it rolled alongside Wabamun Lake.
The revelation that CN was aware of the car's contents before Alberta Environment became suspicious has further angered residents, already upset at the pace of the lake's clean up. Friday they blocked the main line for more than four hours to protest the pace of the clean up.
FROM AUG. 5, 2005: Province issues environmental clean up order for Wabamun
"Maybe there's something else in those rail cars that is going to come out today, or the day after," one man said at a public meeting Tuesday.
Residents have been told to not drink the water, or use it for showers or to wash dishes. Wabamun has been shipping its water in from Stony Plain.
Environment Minister Guy Boutilier is threatening CN with harsh penalties in connection with the spill, saying the company may have breached the law by not immediately disclosing exactly what was in the leaking rail cars.
The Telegram (St. John's)
2005.08.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Safety record questioned; Two serious CN derailments in one week
The Telegram (St. John's)
2005.08.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Criticism of CN Rail is building a head of steam as two of its unions joined a major environmental group Tuesday in questioning the railway's safety record after two environmentally damaging derailments last week.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and Canadian Auto Workers Local 100, which represent engineers and shop workers respectively, have written Transport Minister Jean Lapierre asking him to investigate CN's maintenance, repair and inspection practices.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club of Canada is demanding Environment Minister Stephane Dion prosecute the former Crown corporation for the ecological damage caused by toxic materials that spilled in the Alberta and B.C. derailments.
CN staunchly defends its safety performance, arguing that despite privatization and job cuts, new monitoring technology has made it the safest railway in North America.
The storm broke over CN last Wednesday when a suspected broken rail caused a freight train to derail and dump 700,000 litres of heavy fuel oil in and around Lake Wabamum, 65 kilometres west of Edmonton. Two days later, another CN freight jumped the tracks over the Cheakamus River canyon north of Vancouver. A ruptured tank car sent more than 40,000 litres of highly corrosive caustic soda into the river, instantly killing thousands of fish and triggering a two-day warning to stay away from the river. Local wells were also temporarily off limits.
''The main reason why we felt strongly about this is because we've got two aquatic eco-systems that have basically been destroyed,'' Stephen Hazell, Sierra Club conservation director, said Tuesday from Ottawa.
''We haven't heard much from either level of government about what they plan to do about it, even though we have environmental laws in this country that cover these exact sorts of situations.''
Ottawa should prosecute the railway under the Fisheries Act or the Environmental Protection Act, he said.
''We have been concerned for many years about the growing reluctance of the federal government to prosecute polluters,'' said Hazell. ''These two instances are among the most egregious that I can recall.''
The unions contend CN's safety record has declined since it was privatized in 1995 and began shedding staff even as it expanded operations by taking over U.S.-based Illinois Central Railroad in 1998, as well as Crown-owned B.C. Rail in 2003.
''We speculate or believe there are some correlating issues here between the downsizing, the weight increase, the train length increase, CN moving from a Crown corporation to a private organization and that kind of stuff,'' said John Burns, vice-president of CAW Local 100 in Vancouver.
''We're asking the minister in a letter to him to do a comprehensive review of CN practices.''
Bruce Willows, senior vice-chairman of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, dismissed suggestions his union was exploiting the incidents to push for more jobs.
''Railway safety doesn't impact directly on our numbers,'' he said. ''It impacts directly on our members' lives, their health and safety.
''What we want to do is exclude the possibility that somehow cutbacks have resulted in a reduction with respect to maintenance of track and equipment.''
But CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the railway's number of reportable accidents has dropped by 20 per cent from last year.
''Obviously we're not perfect,'' he said. ''We've got a lot of room for improvement, but we do take some pride in the fact that the industry bodies ... clearly show that CN is the safest railway in Canada as well as North America and has been so for a number of years.''
Goss says further meetings between residents, government and CN are scheduled for Thursday.
Wabamun water results expected today
Last updated Aug 11 2005 09:14 AM MDT
CBC News
Wabamun Lake residents expect to hear Thursday what damage a hazardous oil caused when it leaked into the water during last week's train derailment.
Test results from the lake and surrounding wells will be available, Alberta Environment says, after it confirmed Wednesday that one of 43 cars that went off the rails Aug. 3 contained an oil used to treat utility poles – a compound that has been linked to skin cancer.
Aerial view of Wabamun Lake, covered in bunker fuel oil.
The news that one of the CN cars was carrying a hazardous substance came to light four days after the derailment, when Alberta Environment officials noticed a green substance at the site, suspecting it was a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon used to preserve wood.
The car was carrying 70,000 litres of the oil.
Initially, it was believed that only bunker fuel oil, a heavy oil used in asphalt production and to power ships, spilled into the lake. Crews are still trying to contain and clean up more than 750,000 litres of the oil on the lake's surface.
CN Rail admitted this week that they'd known since Thursday that one of the derailed cars was carrying the pole-treating oil.
"That inaction's just made a situation which was bad incredibly bad," Doug Goss, spokesman for Wabamun residents and cottagers, said. "Now they're trying to play catch up on it. It's the best they can do with an incredibly bad situation.
"But they're the authors of that bad situation. We're all frustrated and still, I think, very angry."
CN spokesman Jim Feeny denied allegations that the company deliberately withheld the information, saying CN had worked hard to get details out quickly as it began to clean up the mess.
"CN would never purposely withhold information relating to public safety, but obviously we have an issue here with the specific information about this one specific car, about the contents of this one specific car," he said, adding CN officials are trying to determine who received the information and why it wasn't immediately passed on.
"Obviously there's been a disconnect here. We do know that there was a problem, that the information did not get to everyone who needed it."
The pole-treating oil was listed as lube oil on the shipping manifest, a general term used to describe the product.
Last Wednesday morning, 43 or 140 rail cars on a train travelling from Edmonton to Vancouver went off the rails as it rolled alongside Wabamun Lake.
The revelation that CN was aware of the car's contents before Alberta Environment became suspicious has further angered residents, already upset at the pace of the lake's clean up. Friday they blocked the main line for more than four hours to protest the pace of the clean up.
FROM AUG. 5, 2005: Province issues environmental clean up order for Wabamun
"Maybe there's something else in those rail cars that is going to come out today, or the day after," one man said at a public meeting Tuesday.
Residents have been told to not drink the water, or use it for showers or to wash dishes. Wabamun has been shipping its water in from Stony Plain.
Environment Minister Guy Boutilier is threatening CN with harsh penalties in connection with the spill, saying the company may have breached the law by not immediately disclosing exactly what was in the leaking rail cars.
The Telegram (St. John's)
2005.08.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Safety record questioned; Two serious CN derailments in one week
The Telegram (St. John's)
2005.08.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Criticism of CN Rail is building a head of steam as two of its unions joined a major environmental group Tuesday in questioning the railway's safety record after two environmentally damaging derailments last week.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and Canadian Auto Workers Local 100, which represent engineers and shop workers respectively, have written Transport Minister Jean Lapierre asking him to investigate CN's maintenance, repair and inspection practices.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club of Canada is demanding Environment Minister Stephane Dion prosecute the former Crown corporation for the ecological damage caused by toxic materials that spilled in the Alberta and B.C. derailments.
CN staunchly defends its safety performance, arguing that despite privatization and job cuts, new monitoring technology has made it the safest railway in North America.
The storm broke over CN last Wednesday when a suspected broken rail caused a freight train to derail and dump 700,000 litres of heavy fuel oil in and around Lake Wabamum, 65 kilometres west of Edmonton. Two days later, another CN freight jumped the tracks over the Cheakamus River canyon north of Vancouver. A ruptured tank car sent more than 40,000 litres of highly corrosive caustic soda into the river, instantly killing thousands of fish and triggering a two-day warning to stay away from the river. Local wells were also temporarily off limits.
''The main reason why we felt strongly about this is because we've got two aquatic eco-systems that have basically been destroyed,'' Stephen Hazell, Sierra Club conservation director, said Tuesday from Ottawa.
''We haven't heard much from either level of government about what they plan to do about it, even though we have environmental laws in this country that cover these exact sorts of situations.''
Ottawa should prosecute the railway under the Fisheries Act or the Environmental Protection Act, he said.
''We have been concerned for many years about the growing reluctance of the federal government to prosecute polluters,'' said Hazell. ''These two instances are among the most egregious that I can recall.''
The unions contend CN's safety record has declined since it was privatized in 1995 and began shedding staff even as it expanded operations by taking over U.S.-based Illinois Central Railroad in 1998, as well as Crown-owned B.C. Rail in 2003.
''We speculate or believe there are some correlating issues here between the downsizing, the weight increase, the train length increase, CN moving from a Crown corporation to a private organization and that kind of stuff,'' said John Burns, vice-president of CAW Local 100 in Vancouver.
''We're asking the minister in a letter to him to do a comprehensive review of CN practices.''
Bruce Willows, senior vice-chairman of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, dismissed suggestions his union was exploiting the incidents to push for more jobs.
''Railway safety doesn't impact directly on our numbers,'' he said. ''It impacts directly on our members' lives, their health and safety.
''What we want to do is exclude the possibility that somehow cutbacks have resulted in a reduction with respect to maintenance of track and equipment.''
But CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the railway's number of reportable accidents has dropped by 20 per cent from last year.
''Obviously we're not perfect,'' he said. ''We've got a lot of room for improvement, but we do take some pride in the fact that the industry bodies ... clearly show that CN is the safest railway in Canada as well as North America and has been so for a number of years.''
Goss says further meetings between residents, government and CN are scheduled for Thursday.
Mom's Harley Raffle
So in addition to having decided to re-marry (date TBA) mom is enjoying being a local celebrity lately. She was just on the news the other day - a story about a local Calgary woman trying to help the new Children's Hospital by offering to raffle off two of her art pieces, but denied because of red tape. (The hospital only wants to deal with much larger sums of money, otherwise the administrative costs outweigh the benefits). Mom was quite upset about this.
Immediately after the story appeared on the news, the Foothills Country Hospice contacted her. She is being interviewed for the Okotoks paper today - she will be raffling off two Harleys to raise $5000 for the hospice as part of their "Wranglers and Rhinestones Gala". And there you have it - everyone can make a difference!
Monday, August 08, 2005
unbelievable wildflowers!
This is the best time of year to hike in and see the wildflower extravaganza at Healy Pass in Banff NP - and the lakes are spectacular up there. Highly recommeded!
Takakkaw Falls
What a great way to see them, and what a distracting view when you are trying to belay! The climb up beside the falls was fantastic and ended with a crawl through a long tunnel emerging at the top of the falls. Highly recommended!
bad day for poor little roo
so have you ever filled your car up with gas, gone in to pay and come out to see it start rolling before your very eyes into an electrical box?
me neither until last week. roo would like to remind everyone who drives a standard to put it it gear even when the parking brake is on and it isn't very hilly! but i'm probably the only one who forgets things like that...
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
folk music
It has been a great year for Folk Festivals in this neck of the woods! Got to work in the record tent at the Calgary Folk Fest and as a garbage picker at the Canmore Folk Fest last weekend. Amazing music - fun to see Winnipeg bands (The Weakerthans and Wailin' Jenny's), Sarah Harmer and phenomenal guitar and drums. Canmore is a great festival - you get to see amazing workshops between the artists who all relax and get to know each other - and it always blows me away to look at the silhouette of the mountains while listening to such an amazing variety of music...
Does anyone know of a good way to share music on blogger?
I got a kick out of this very dramatic cover story from FFWD during my 18.5 hours in the record tent...which in itself was a hilariously dramatic place...the article was great at leaving you with no idea of what his music was actually like and wanting to go see for yourself!
FOLK FESTIVAL
by Mary-Lynn Wardle
The heart of the matter
Justin Rutledge explores the finer points of car-crash love
Preview
JUSTIN RUTLEDGE
Calgary Folk Music Festival
July 21 to 24
Prince’s Island Park
At least once in their lifetime, almost everyone will have their heart smashed into roadkill on the highway of love. And after that tender organ lies throbbing and bleeding, exposed and alone, its owner will usually seek a tranquil place distant from prying eyes, so that they mourn alone.
Luckily, for fans of honest melodic music, Toronto singer-songwriter Justin Rutledge did not seek that private place when his heart ended up crushed into Technicolor glory a few years back. Instead, he recorded No Never Alone, an album of what he describes as progressive country songs that has been taking music connoisseurs by storm.
Originally, there was only going to be one copy of No Never Alone. Rutledge was going to record a four-song demo and present it to Heather, the semi-truck of a lady who connected with his heart at 120 kilometres per hour.
"That’s all I wanted to do – make a demo and give it to her. She’s still out there. I think she’s coming to the (Calgary Folk Music) Festival," the 26-year-old singer says from Toronto, where he is house-sitting for a member of Blue Rodeo. "I just wanted to say thanks for putting all this stuff in my heart. It’s a very private record, but I’m glad that people got to hear it."
The story of Justin and Heather is one of those great romances where you can almost hear the Capulets and Montagues duelling in the background. They met near Hurst, Ontario, where they were planting trees together (Rutledge sucked at this – you got paid by the tree and he just wanted to smoke and enjoy the woods) and things got rolling.
Rutledge had been a bartender in downtown Toronto for about five years, and had also tended the taps in a pub in England for a year, meeting lots of people involved in music along the way. So, when Heather awoke the muse in Rutledge and songs started pouring out, he had plenty of help lined up to make his record. Mary Margaret O’Hara is one of about 20 people who contributed their talents.
But, in the middle of recording, Rutledge pulled the plug to follow the mercurial Heather to Canmore, leaving a fistful of unfinished tracks behind. At the time, he was working at the bar, paying off about $1,000 a month on his student loan (he studied English for three years at the University of Toronto) and saving money to live happily ever after.
"Luckily it didn’t work out," he says laughing. After only a month in Canmore the couple broke up, and since Rutledge had saved up some money he hit the road. He moved to Vancouver, blew all his money and then returned to Toronto, broke, and one year later finished the record.
"I just wanted to make this record and give it to this girl. That was my only intention – I didn’t want to get signed, I didn’t want to put it out, that stuff wasn’t in my head. My main intention was just to make one copy of it and give it to her. Then we broke up and I had to finish this record." The singer had invested about $2,000 into his recording when the British label Shady Lane helped him finish it. After a successful British release and tour, Six Shooter Records picked No Never Alone up for release in Canada.
While most people have responded enthusiastically to its pure and emotive sound, some reviewers have naysayed the album’s slow feel and consistently quiet tone. Rutledge bristles at the mention of this.
"I think that that’s the easiest criticism to make and that upsets me because it shows a tremendous lack of imagination to write that down. Of course it’s a slow album, and that’s the whole point. I think that anyone who’s going to criticize it for its lack of tempo should get out of the music criticism business. I love records with feel. I don’t feel a need to put on my quota of rock songs. So if someone is saying it’s too slow, they can fuck off."
Having met his goal of "wanting to make a standard modern country record" Rutledge has begun recording his next album, which he hopes to release next year. So far, NQ Arbuckle and Oh Susanna are two of the musicians who have dropped by to lend a hand. Of course after working through his heartbreak, Rutledge is in a different headspace now than he was for No Never Alone. "I couldn’t write those songs now. The new album is going to be a bit less sparse, but I still want to maintain that closeness and intimate quality. I find music songwriting really kind of painful at times. I’m not an extremely prolific songwriter so I spend a lot of time with the songs and I write in my head so I can’t really get away from them."
If the singer seems incredibly comfortable talking about how his heart was turned into roadkill and how gut-wrenching it can be to write it all down, it is just a continuation of the authenticity that connects his songs to the listener’s heart. "It can be comfortable. But I don’t know, I tend not to do that coy bullshit."
And as for Heather, how did she react after her ex-lover’s heart ended up limping along to its own version of Blood on the Tracks in Rutledge’s absolutely naked songs? "She said ‘thank you.’"
Does anyone know of a good way to share music on blogger?
I got a kick out of this very dramatic cover story from FFWD during my 18.5 hours in the record tent...which in itself was a hilariously dramatic place...the article was great at leaving you with no idea of what his music was actually like and wanting to go see for yourself!
FOLK FESTIVAL
by Mary-Lynn Wardle
The heart of the matter
Justin Rutledge explores the finer points of car-crash love
Preview
JUSTIN RUTLEDGE
Calgary Folk Music Festival
July 21 to 24
Prince’s Island Park
At least once in their lifetime, almost everyone will have their heart smashed into roadkill on the highway of love. And after that tender organ lies throbbing and bleeding, exposed and alone, its owner will usually seek a tranquil place distant from prying eyes, so that they mourn alone.
Luckily, for fans of honest melodic music, Toronto singer-songwriter Justin Rutledge did not seek that private place when his heart ended up crushed into Technicolor glory a few years back. Instead, he recorded No Never Alone, an album of what he describes as progressive country songs that has been taking music connoisseurs by storm.
Originally, there was only going to be one copy of No Never Alone. Rutledge was going to record a four-song demo and present it to Heather, the semi-truck of a lady who connected with his heart at 120 kilometres per hour.
"That’s all I wanted to do – make a demo and give it to her. She’s still out there. I think she’s coming to the (Calgary Folk Music) Festival," the 26-year-old singer says from Toronto, where he is house-sitting for a member of Blue Rodeo. "I just wanted to say thanks for putting all this stuff in my heart. It’s a very private record, but I’m glad that people got to hear it."
The story of Justin and Heather is one of those great romances where you can almost hear the Capulets and Montagues duelling in the background. They met near Hurst, Ontario, where they were planting trees together (Rutledge sucked at this – you got paid by the tree and he just wanted to smoke and enjoy the woods) and things got rolling.
Rutledge had been a bartender in downtown Toronto for about five years, and had also tended the taps in a pub in England for a year, meeting lots of people involved in music along the way. So, when Heather awoke the muse in Rutledge and songs started pouring out, he had plenty of help lined up to make his record. Mary Margaret O’Hara is one of about 20 people who contributed their talents.
But, in the middle of recording, Rutledge pulled the plug to follow the mercurial Heather to Canmore, leaving a fistful of unfinished tracks behind. At the time, he was working at the bar, paying off about $1,000 a month on his student loan (he studied English for three years at the University of Toronto) and saving money to live happily ever after.
"Luckily it didn’t work out," he says laughing. After only a month in Canmore the couple broke up, and since Rutledge had saved up some money he hit the road. He moved to Vancouver, blew all his money and then returned to Toronto, broke, and one year later finished the record.
"I just wanted to make this record and give it to this girl. That was my only intention – I didn’t want to get signed, I didn’t want to put it out, that stuff wasn’t in my head. My main intention was just to make one copy of it and give it to her. Then we broke up and I had to finish this record." The singer had invested about $2,000 into his recording when the British label Shady Lane helped him finish it. After a successful British release and tour, Six Shooter Records picked No Never Alone up for release in Canada.
While most people have responded enthusiastically to its pure and emotive sound, some reviewers have naysayed the album’s slow feel and consistently quiet tone. Rutledge bristles at the mention of this.
"I think that that’s the easiest criticism to make and that upsets me because it shows a tremendous lack of imagination to write that down. Of course it’s a slow album, and that’s the whole point. I think that anyone who’s going to criticize it for its lack of tempo should get out of the music criticism business. I love records with feel. I don’t feel a need to put on my quota of rock songs. So if someone is saying it’s too slow, they can fuck off."
Having met his goal of "wanting to make a standard modern country record" Rutledge has begun recording his next album, which he hopes to release next year. So far, NQ Arbuckle and Oh Susanna are two of the musicians who have dropped by to lend a hand. Of course after working through his heartbreak, Rutledge is in a different headspace now than he was for No Never Alone. "I couldn’t write those songs now. The new album is going to be a bit less sparse, but I still want to maintain that closeness and intimate quality. I find music songwriting really kind of painful at times. I’m not an extremely prolific songwriter so I spend a lot of time with the songs and I write in my head so I can’t really get away from them."
If the singer seems incredibly comfortable talking about how his heart was turned into roadkill and how gut-wrenching it can be to write it all down, it is just a continuation of the authenticity that connects his songs to the listener’s heart. "It can be comfortable. But I don’t know, I tend not to do that coy bullshit."
And as for Heather, how did she react after her ex-lover’s heart ended up limping along to its own version of Blood on the Tracks in Rutledge’s absolutely naked songs? "She said ‘thank you.’"
Frame Lake, Yellowknife
And speaking of Yellowknife...not only have Steph & Ken been smart enough to make this great place their home, but now Dorthy and my newly retired dad will be there for a year - I never in a million years would have guessed they'd end up there (neither would dad who had visions of retiring someplace warm-er)!
Seems like a good excuse to plan the next canoe trip on the Nahani...
Steph & Ken
Just a little jump back to June 25th and a very beautiful wedding in Yellowknife! The cake was especially delicious and should be made and eaten every June 25th in their honor!
Carrot Cake with White Chocolate Icing
Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon Wilton Pure Vanilla Extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each nutmeg, cloves, allspice and salt
4 cups (approx. 1 lb.) grated carrots
2/3 cup chopped nuts (STEPH DIDN'T ADD THESE BECAUSE SHE'S A SWEETIE!)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, drained
Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray 2 nine in. round pans with vegetable spray, or use Wilton Cake Release (Click here for complete instructions on preparing baking pans.) In large mixing bowl, beat eggs until foamy; add oil and vanilla and beat well. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and salt together; add to egg mixture and mix well. Fold in carrots, nuts, raisins and pineapple. Pour into prepared pans and bake 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on cooling grid and invert on grid to cool.
Makes 5 1/2 cups batter. (YOU DON"T HAVE TO TRIPLE THE RECIPE LIKE STEPH DID)
WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM CHEESE ICING
1 (12 oz.) package Wilton White Candy Melts or any white confectionery coating
2 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Melt Candy Melts according to directions. Allow coating to cool slightly, stirring occasionally (don't let it harden). In a mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese (preferably with a flat beater) until smooth and creamy. Gradually beat in the cooled coating until blended and smooth. Beat in the butter and lemon juice. Smooth a small amount of icing on bottom cake layer; top side up. Top with second layer bottom side up. Frost cake with remaining icing. Refrigerate until ready to serve; bring to room temperature 30 minutes before serving.
(NOTE: KEN DID NOT APPROVE OF WHITE CHOCOLATE IN THE ICING SO TO BE TRUE, IT SHOULD BE MADE WITHOUT THE OFFENSIVE CHOCOLATE)
Makes 12-14 servings.
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