The Brits had a slogan, “Never complain, never explain.” It helped them run the world’s biggest empire. Sometimes I think along the way they invented the GVRD.


Over a year ago, the GVRD goofed up. They allowed a massive outflow of water to be released from Cleveland Dam, and almost washed a few folks out to sea, plus a good chunk of the riverbank outside my office on Clyde Avenue.

Citizens who watched a portion of their property dissolve into English Bay, were understandably upset. Time for an angry MLA letter. To Johnny Carline, super bureaucrat in charge of the GVRD.

Here is some of what I said,

Re: Dangerous Water Levels and Erosion on Capilano River

I am writing to express my deep concern over the refusal of GVRD to take responsibility for correcting serious water level and bank erosion problems on the Capilano River, deriving from GVRD’s operation of the Cleveland Dam.

Background

In July 2002, North Shore residents learned from the media that a malfunction in the operation of water control gates at the Cleveland Dam had caused a sudden surge of water downstream, stranding four fishermen who had to be removed from an island by North Shore Rescue using a helicopter. Local police forces, local fire departments, the Coast Guard, and a North Vancouver District fireboat all became involved before this rescue was successful. Your Paul Archibald was quoted as saying the problem was a malfunctioning drum gate on Cleveland Dam.

Constituents of mine who fish for salmon and steelhead on this river tell me that sudden river flows are not uncommon on the Capilano, as gates are raised and lowered without warning. They tell me they “have to scramble” up embankments to avoid being washed downstream. The risks are obvious.

Even more alarming, one fisherman told me of witnessing a group of young boys who were swimming in the Capilano when it took one of its sudden surges, and who were washed a considerable distance downstream before successfully paddling ashore to safety. The risks are obvious.

In July 2002, according to media reports, WCB ordered GVRD to make the Cleveland Dam safer by the end of the year. Your Mr. Archibald was again quoted as saying the risk assessment was ordered by WCB “to make sure there weren’t some things we could do to mitigate the damage caused by large flows.” Again according to the media, the WCB investigation concluded that “inadvertent and uncontrolled” operations of the spillway gate had put GVRD workers “at undue risk of injury and/or drowning on a number of occasions.” Consequently, it was reported, the WCB ordered the GVRD to “swiftly” develop, implement and enforce a written “lockout policy” that would stop the dam’s spillway from opening accidentally.

It was reported the GVRD was looking into installing instrumentation both at the dam and downstream and to feed that information back into the control room. The 1940’s drum gate is automatic and operates by itself, according to Mr. Archibald.

Finally, there is this revealing quote form Mr. Archibald, “… we are losing our faith in the system’s ability to control the drum gate the way it should be controlled in this era.” And also, “It's [to modernize the controls and put the power into the hands of the control room operators] relatively inexpensive and within the means of our current budget.” (North Shore News, February 26, 2003)

Throughout, it is significant that WCB’s mandate was more concerned about the safety of GVRD employees than about the safety of our citizens.

The March 12, 2003 Flood

History repeated itself on March 12, 2003 when the gates of Cleveland Dam opened suddenly in the middle of the night, releasing a huge plug of water. Fortunately, it seems nobody was on the riverbanks or swimming in the river on this most recent incident. However, it was a sufficiently large outflow to scour the river bottom and change the course of the river significantly.

As I look out my office window while typing this letter, I can see how the Capilano in the vicinity of Clyde Avenue, overnight meandered from an easterly channel to a westerly channel.

Banks were eroded, and large trees toppled into the floor. A private viewing platform on Crown Land upriver was washed away (fortunately nobody was viewing at the time.) The GVRD recreation path downstream from my office was washed away.

In a March 20, 2003 letter to William Ker, a concerned citizen living on the east bank, your risk management officer, Mr. Day, admitted the GVRD’s fault. (“The GVRD are not in a position to make any commitment with respect to repairing or replacing the retaining wall and buffer zone that we damaged as a result of a discharge of water from the Cleveland Dam.” – March 20, 2003 Day to Ker and Ho.)

It was left to the Municipality of West Vancouver on its own initiative and local taxpayer expense to erect warning signs and fences, so that persons would not inadvertently jog along the GVRD’s footpath and fall 30 feet or so down the newly eroded bank into the river below.

Potential More Serious Property Damage

A few hundred feet downstream from the Park Royal Hotel lie two bridges across Marine Drive. These bridges are part of the Provincial highway system linking Vancouver with West Vancouver, the Horseshoe Bay ferries Whistler, and beyond.

In the absence of rechannelling, the current (and revised) lie of the river will eventually see it undercut the footings of the abutments of these two highway bridges. Does the GVRD have Bailey Bridges in reserve?

The Problem of the Fish

As GVRD is undoubtedly aware, a Federal department, DFO, has an obligation to protect fish habit. There is no doubt in my mind that important spawning habitat was wiped out by GVRD’s operation of the Cleveland Dam. To make life more complex, measures to restore the river to its original channel will, I am sure, involve a full measure of DFO oversight and scientific environmental studies before work can commence. My goodness.

What is GVRD’s plan to curb continued bank erosion, which will eventually threaten private property and major provincial transportation links?

The Problem of Controlling Rivers on the North Shore

It is true we live in a rainy climate, and from time to time the combination of melting snow pack and heavy rainfall causes natural surges in stream flows such as Capilano. However, my P.Eng. instincts tell me the surges on the Capilano River far exceed in volume and frequency those that would occur naturally. What is unusual about the operation of the Cleveland Dam gates is the fact that having stored considerable tonnes of water, they open all at once, and let down a torrent which causes the river to rise by 4 feet or more, all in a matter of minutes. Nature does not behave this way.

In my opinion GVRD is the prime cause of the aforementioned difficulties, not Mother Nature.

GVRD Response to Date

GVRD workers are said to have admitted to local citizens that when the alarm bells rang in your Burnaby control station on the evening of March 20, operators awakened their supervisor at home who, it is said, told them not to worry about it and went back to bed. This story is not verified, but has an air of believability.

GVRD workers are also reported to have said that after the helicopter rescue incident the computer program controlling the Cleveland Dam gates was “torn apart and rebuilt.” If that report is true, it seems the software rebuilding was deficient.

Since the confessional letter of March 20, the tone of GVRD’s response to letters by citizens and politicians such as myself has changed. There is denial of blame, and a suggestion that -- since it is Crown Land that is affected -- the problem rests with Victoria.

A legal donnybrook is not, in my view, in the interests of anyone, but is surely invited by GVRD’s posture to date.

Summing Up

Johnny, I appreciate that running GVRD is a complex and demanding job, with many demands on senior management time. However, this is a situation, which if allowed to fester, will spin into the Courts in short order.

As we make the transition from low flood to high flood season, who is going to protect citizens, property and our vital transportation links? I doubt that it will be the lawyers.

Yours truly,

Ralph Sultan, MLA, P. Eng.
West Vancouver-Capilano


Johnny never replied. Well, maybe my letter got lost behind a filing cabinet.

Sometimes in life – with hindsight -- you wonder if you have overstated your case. But when the response on a life-threatening issue is … silence … it kind of makes you wonder.

A couple of weeks ago, GVRD finally got around to repairing the river bank (see photographs) and their public trail. Better a year late than never.

We are less certain that the remote computer control and operations screwups which threatened anybody visiting the banks of the Capilano River, have been fixed. I advise caution until GVRD give us greater reassurance of its capacity to deal with this threat to lives and property.

Did my angry letter prod them into action? Who knows? Regional government works in mysterious and remote ways. “Never complain, never explain.”

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