The two letters which follow one another in this section of the website, have been provided to the editor of the website by one of the Trustees of the Improvement District known as North Canyon Improvement District.
You can note where all of our troubles begin and end as we attempt to control our drinking water. This is an important struggle that the North Canyon Improvement District is going through and for anyone that has information to share, please do so directly with the e-mail address noted below.

North Canyon Improvement District
P.O. Box 60
Canyon, BC
V0B 1C1
250-428-4031
Mr. Garry Beaudry
District Manager
Kootenay Lake Forest District
Ministry of Forests and Range
Nelson, BC
February 15, 2008
Dear Mr. Beaudry,
This document is a statement, prepared by the North Canyon Improvement District
(NCID), detailing numerous serious Creston Valley Forest Corporation (CVFC)
violations of their 2007 Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) as it pertains to their proposed
logging in the NCIDʼs drinking watershed of Camp Run Creek. This statement is
centered on the CVFCʼs blatant disregard for the public participation process in their
proposed logging of a drinking watershed. The NCID is very concerned that the CVFC
has, by deliberately ignoring the public participation procedure, intentionally and
maliciously denied any organized opposition and meaningful resistance by affected
Camp Run Creek watershed stakeholders. The CVFC is recklessly pursuing a
destructive integrated resource use policy that puts a gun to the NCIDʼs head in a
winner-take-all game of watershed roulette. The unanimous consensus of the NCIDʼs
Board of Trustees is to implore the District Manager of the Kootenay Lake Forest District
to rescind CVFCʼs tenure agreement granting them access to the valuable forested
Crown lands that comprise the Improvement Districtʼs water catchment basin. The
contentious disposition of the CVFCʼs logging rights to the Camp Run Creek watershed
has proven to be erroneous already, and must be revoked immediately to preserve
North Canyonʼs precious source of drinking water supply.
The NCID is, and has been, a licensed consumptive water-user group with a water
license on the Camp Run Creek since 1908. The NCID has relied upon the watershed
in question as a primary barrier in their source water protection for a century. The
pristine, undisturbed nature of the Camp Run Creek watershed ecosystem has
consistently provided the drinking water quantity, quality, and timing of flow necessary for the citizens of North Canyon. There are very grave concerns and outrage within the community that the NCID is being purposefully denied an opportunity to defend the watershed for their vital drinking water purposes. The NCID is appealing to the Ministry of Forests and Range, Kootenay Lake Forest District, to order an immediate halt to the CVFCʼs ruinous logging proposal for the Camp Run Creek watershed. The sole purpose
of this watershed must continue to be the valuable production of healthy drinking water
for the community of North Canyon. The CVFC have already proven by their actions
documented below, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they cannot be entrusted with the
preservation of the NCIDʼs source waters coming from the Camp Run Creek watershed.
The NCID has been studying this critical issue since it first came to light in late 2007.
What follows below is a brief statement of the NCIDʼs understanding of the history of
this conflict between water-user groups and the logging industry in this area of the
Kootenays.