The Gill Bar area was the target of an emergency cleanup on the Fraser River near Chilliwack.

Cleanup volunteers rolled up to the site last Wednesday (Aug. 28) with trucks and trailers at the ready to remove debris and waste left behind after an encampment with unhoused individuals was removed.

The cleanup effort was led by the Gill Bar restoration team, X谩:y Sy铆:ts鈥檈m铆lep, an Indigenous-led partnership, with the help of volunteers, said Anna-Lise Cooke, lands manager with Sqw谩 First Nation.

"Because it's a gravel bar within the Fraser River system the water rises with freshet, so any type of debris just gets washed away," Cooke said.

There was a sense of urgency to protect the valuable riverside habitat, she said, since Gill Bar is known to be a critical area for salmon and salmon habitat. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of fish, and prevent the ongoing loss of returning stocks.

"It's overwhelming what we saw," Cooke said about the mess they found at Gill.

Tents, tarps, sharps, clothing, and metal were put in piles, and dragged off the land. There was rotten food and broken glass spread out on the gravel bar site, along with hazardous waste like propane tanks and batteries.

The pair who had been living rough in the bush were met by outreach workers from community and social service agencies, who were able to talk to them about available services and resources for those experiencing homeless.

It was a one-day cleanup operation but there were still one big piece left behind.

"We still have one item that was too big and heavy. There was no way to haul it out," Cooke said. It appeared to be a fabric tote that was "leaking" some type of mystery liquid.

There was no room to get a vehicle into the area, so cleanup volunteers like David Ardill, Ross Aikenhead of the Fraser Valley Illegal Dumping Alliance, and Chilliwack-Vedder Cleanup Society, and Lina Azeez of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, had to manually remove it through the trails.

They trucked away about 2,300 lbs (1,043 kg) of waste from the cleanup.

Azeez said they felt it was incumbent upon them to get it done before the fall rains arrived and washed everything downstream.

"It became clear we needed to clean this area up as soon as possible," Azeez said.

Things had been getting out of hand, she said.

Organizers said the emergency cleanup effort was meant to prevent further habitat destruction in the riparian-rich area, that was suffering from over-use, but was known to support the rearing of baby salmon before they migrate back to the sea.

"It really is a precious resource and we really need to acknowledge and treat it accordingly," Cooke added.

Vehicle access to the sensitive riparian zone at Gill Bar was shut down in 2022 after local river stewards pressured authorities to take action to protect the long-standing, multi-user recreational area.

In 2023 funding of $1.5 million came through for Gill Bar restoration from federal and provincial governments through the B.C. Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund. That led to the creation of the project 鈥榅谩:y Sy铆:ts鈥檈m铆lep: Gill Bar Restoration and Management team鈥�  to implement 鈥渁n Indigenous-led approach鈥� to researching, and conserving the rich habitat of the area known as Gill Bar.

The restoration is still in the data-collection part of the assessment phase, but they undertook the recent cleanup in the name of urgent habitat protection.

Prior to the cement lock-block they put on the dike to block off vehicle access, the gravel bar was known for decades as a popular outdoor destination where people would drive to the end of Gill Road in Rosedale to find a spot to off-road, camp, search for agates, fish, dirt bike, or have a campfire. But over time the ongoing abuse, trash-dumping, and habitat destruction became just too much.

The move to finally shut down vehicle access at Gill came after a few years after they installed a gate initially in 2019, on the heels of ousting squatters and trying to prevent the endless garbage-dumping. The gate was repeatedly broken, and signage about habitat destruction was also destroyed, to everyone's frustration among the partners.

Moves by DFO to protect valuable salmon and sturgeon habitat were on the heels attempts by local stewardship partners to try to put a halt to the degradation of Gill Bar, from endless pallet fires leaving pounds of nails in the sand, to environmental abuse like splashing through sensitive back-channels in a convoy of trucks.

Officials then blocked vehicle access completely in July 2022. Federal DFO officials had been granted the authority to close Gill Bar by the province, and it was authorized in conjunction with the City of Chilliwack, Ministry of Forests, and Ministry of Lands, Water and Resource Stewardship officials.

The Gill Bar restoration will be underway until March 2026.