Hey Is That The Warm Water Treatment Working On The Nechako

By Ben Meisner

Has anyone spotted that small sliver of water open below the Canfor water intake on the Nechako River?

Could it be that the experts are putting warm water into the river with a view to blasting a trench into the Fraser River?  Naw, it’s just Mother Nature opening up a section of the river in pretty much the same spot as we paid $400,000 to do last winter.

Oh did I forget to mention there  are also a couple of spots where the river is open upstream of that, including a few slivers in the area above and below the Foothills and John Hart bridges. Warm water again, or just mother nature?  You be the judge.

This year the Nechako River froze over in an orderly manner, no big flush into the system when the river was freezing over from the Skins Lake spillway, but then there was no publicity to that fact last year or the fact that this year there is considerably less water in the river. What a surprise.

How come we didn’t get another dose that the cause really was those pesky beetles (can’t sue them) who killed all the pine trees making for much more water last year? That of course, along with the pitch that there was more water in the system. Scarcely however was there a mention that the major amount of the water entering the Nechako around that time was coming from Skins Lake Spill way.

To their credit however, Alcan (Rio Tinto) now doesn’t have to send any water down for our pleasure at any time, they are not committed to holding back water to serve the public. They do however fall under the laws of Canada and there can be a solid argument that at least in large measure the surge of water released into the system last winter as they repaired the spill way caused part of the flood that hit the city, not God as some people would like us to believe.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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