Gravel removal for flood recovery purposes is starting along the Vedder River and Vedder Canal in Chilliwack.

Provincial environment reps said there is a "robust" plan to extract 264,000 cubic metres from the riverbed in 11 locations, whittled down from the original application to remove 360,000 cubic metres.

Advocates for protecting salmon and salmon habitat are now trying to convince authorities to reduce the 2024 volumes from the upper reaches of the Vedder River.

City of Chilliwack issued notice last week that the Vedder Rotary Trail will be closed in sections as of Aug. 26 as contractors prepare to undertake the in-river sediment removals in different locations.

Timing is of the essence, say salmon advocates.

B.C. Wildlife Federation leadership is opposed to the planned gravel mining in the upper sections of the Vedder, which have an existing gravel deficit from decades of over-extraction.

BCWF officials including director Jesse Zeman and president David Lewis fired off a letter asking for a last-minute reprieve, noting they "recognize and applaud" last year鈥檚 cancellation of the Vedder removals, but are concerned with the suddenly enlarged scale for the upper reaches.

"Development decisions that affect our rivers must not destroy vital salmon habitat. Especially, one that carelessly aims to destroy crucial pink salmon habitat 鈥� it is simply unacceptable."

Although the original plan for 360,000 cubic metres has been whittled down to 264,000 for this year, BCWF and still worried about the key habitat for pinks in the upper reaches.

BCWF director Zeman put it succinctly: "The fish can't afford it."

With an urgent request to meet with provincial ministers, Zeman and Lewis concluded their letter with: 鈥淲e urge you to cancel all gravel mining in critical salmon habitat.鈥�

Officially the 2024 work is being undertaken to address the estimated 440,000 cubic metres that washed down into the Vedder River from the 2021 atmospheric river events, explained a spokesperson from Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

Those catastrophic storms "deposited about 10 times the annual amount of sediment" into the Vedder, "increasing the risk of future floods in Chilliwack and Abbotsford," MOE said.

That's the substantiation for this year's removals, focused on 11 spots along the Vedder. It falls under the Province鈥檚 Flood Waste and Debris Management Plan, "to ensure the safety of Vedder River and surrounding communities," MOE said.

The 2024 planning saw planning involvement from the cities of Chilliwack and Abbotsford, Sumas First Nation and qualified engineers and professionals.

"The work is happening this year in a time that is a low-risk window that avoids impacts to fish and fish habitat as determined by DFO," MOE said.

The work should take a couple of months.

What about the BCWF director's assertion that the "fish can't afford this"?

"All work on this project will be guided by registered qualified professionals, local experts, and licensed engineers to ensure completion in a safe and environmentally sound fashion," the MOE replied to the Chilliwack Progress in the Aug. 24 emailed statement.

"The Sumas First Nation will play an important monitoring and oversight role, which includes a fish behaviour study to better understand any impacts from this work. This information will help improve future gravel removals and ensure alignment with traditional Indigenous and environmental values.

"We are confident that this work will protect fish as well as the communities that live, work, and play on this important waterway."

Lina Azeez of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society said some of the best salmon habitat for spawning and rearing is found in the upper reaches of the Vedder.

So a better long-term approach is needed.

"We would like to see no gravel removed from the sections in the upper reach," Azeez said.

Last year, a pink salmon return year, saw planned gravel mining postponed to 2024, but now it's being revived, and the Vedder is "under threat" as a result.

"We understand the need to extract gravel for flood control in the lower sections, but we also recognize that it's a Band-Aid solution." They are asking governments and regulatory agencies to seriously look at long-term flood adaptation options, because the all-out removals are impacting the river.

"We need to learn to live with water," she said, adding one option is looking at upstream erosion control. Another concern is the timing, with six weeks of work, and the fisheries work window set to close on Sept. 15. But based on analysis by our allies at the Fraser Valley Salmon Society, "a happy compromise" can be reached, Azeez said.

"To alleviate any flood safety concerns, the lower three-quarters of the Vedder River and Canal could be mined for up to 150,000 cubic metres of gravel. "It鈥檚 the upper section of the river, between Vedder Crossing and Lickman Road, we are most concerned about." Azeez also underlined what they say is a gravel deficit in the upper section.

This work is sometimes referred to as "gravel removal" but technically the gravel is only one component of "sediment," a word which can encompass everything from boulders to silt. Prior to the atmospheric river disaster, sediment removals from the Vedder River and Canal, would go ahead every two years for flood prevention purposes for both Chilliwack and Abbotsford.

The gravel removals were halted in 2018, 2020 or 2023, sometimes at the last minute.

Biologist Marvin Rosenau, a fisheries expert and director with the Fraser Valley Salmon Society, said the upper section of the Vedder River has been "overmined" for the last 40 years.

"That is why we oppose this part of the project," Rosenau said. "What MOE keeps omitting from the story, and the reason for the 2018 and 2020 application withdrawals, is that that volume of overmining was approximately 600,000 cubic metres prior to the atmospheric rivers event."

So the atmospheric river events in 2021, which ushered in "input" of 440,000 cubic metres, still comprised a very large deficit of 160,000 cubic metres, he said.

Rosenau said the agencies should concentrate on locations that have a serious flood threat, which means the middle and lower sections.

"Finally, and this isn't only directly related to gravel removal this year, but also has implications for future years, the consulting engineers so badly screwed up the analyses in previous years, and underestimated the flood threat in the middle and lower sections that it appears that this part of the Vedder River is now in a state of serious flood threat."

That reverts things back "to a 2021 Sumas River dike break type of a calamity-situation, and the agencies now have no option but to massively raise the dikes in these parts of the Vedder River because they could not take out enough gravel to provide the policy level flood protection in the middle section," Rosenau said.

Those are some of the real issues at play, he added, and residents who live in the area do not realize "the situation" they are in.