Shuswap Lake salmonid will have improved habitat, thanks to a partnership between the Little Shuswap Indian Band and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
With $18,000 in funding provided by the BC Conservation Foundation through the federal Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program, 25 linear metres of the Shuswap Lake foreshore at Silvery Beach are being restored.
But like an iceberg, a larger problem is hidden beneath the waves.
On-shore, an abandoned house, chunks of concrete and an estimated 200 tires are being removed from Silvery Beach, which is located beside the Trans-Canada Highway just west of the Squilax-Anglemont turn-off.
Sean Bennett, a senior restoration biologist with Fisheries and Oceans, says many years ago, a breakwater was built in the lake and other tires were used to shore up the beach.
“We’ve partnered with the band to remove the tires and concrete and tear down the house,” Bennett says of work that began Monday, Jan. 26. “We will re-slope the bank, make it a more natural slope and plant willows and cottonwoods.”
Bennett says the tires and concrete are on the foreshore where the lake floods every year during freshet, an area frequented by adult sockeye and juvenile fish of all types.
“We estimate there’s a few hundred tires in the bank and a few thousand in the lake itself,” said Bennett. “We have to figure that out. There could be a few thousand, or there could be 20,000; we don’t know for sure.”
In order to gauge the size of the problem, Bennett says funding will have to be found to carry out an underwater investigation followed by removal.
Little Shuswap Indian Band fisheries manager Aaron Arnouse says the Silvery Beach project is one the band has long wanted to fix.
The abandoned house is owned by a band member, whose approval was sought for the demolition.
Arnouse was working with Fisheries on another area of concern on Scotch Creek when he was asked to partner in the Silvery Beach clean-up.
“Scotch Creek changes its flow every year with the high water,” he said of the river that flows alongside the Squilax-Anglemont Road. “And there’s one part where the bank started to fall into the creek.”
Rock is already being dropped near the site so four channels can be built to divert the creek, and rip rap will be placed to stabilize the bank.
Arnouse says the work is being completed with Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure approval and several funding sources, including Fisheries and Oceans and the Swecepemc Fisheries Commission.
Back at Silvery Beach, Arnouse says the tires could be anywhere from 10 to 60 feet below the surface and the initial clean-up now underway is the first of three phases.
Phases two and three are still in the planning stage, he adds.