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Quick Peaks: October 26, 2011

Rainy Day Lake Powell River Regional District directors are considering an application from the owner of a commercial fish hatchery for a licence to divert water from Rainy Day Lake.

Rainy Day Lake

Powell River Regional District directors are considering an application from the owner of a commercial fish hatchery for a licence to divert water from Rainy Day Lake.

Brad Gustafson has applied to the provincial government for a water licence to divert .06 cubic metres a second year round, an estimated one million gallons a day. He is proposing to pipe the water to his fish hatchery, which is located on the east side of Saltery Creek about 1.5 kilometres downstream from the lake. The plan is to locate a water intake pipe at the south end of the lake near where it drains into Saltery Creek. He currently has a water licence for the same volume of water, which he draws from the creek near his fish hatchery. Logging and road building activities in the creek’s watershed have increased siltation in the creek, which has contributed to an 80-per-cent loss in the hatchery’s brood stock.

Gustafson told regional district rural directors at the October 18 planning committee meeting that he would not be drying up Saltery Creek. He also said that the creek was non-fish bearing.

In 2003, Gustafson applied to the provincial government for a fish farm tenure in Rainy Day Lake. He was proposing to have 10 net pens in the 25-hectare lake to raise about one million fish. The government turned down the application.

The regional district board is expected to consider the application at the October 27 board meeting.


Setting it straight

A Rotary exchange student Mariah Siminoff met in Sweden during her year there was from Texas, not Texada Island, as reported in last week’s issue.