Derelict boat removed from sensitive estuary

Dan MacLennan
Campbell River Courier-Islander

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

A derelict boat was removed from the Willow Creek estuary Monday by the Campbell River Salmon Foundation, but Mike Gage isn't impressed with the lack of action by DFO and the Coast Guard.

"They really dropped the ball on this," the CRSF chair said. "They should be reminded that estuaries should be treated like nurseries, not like scrap yards."

The boat was reportedly being towed to Cortes Island when it broke free during a Dec. 28th southeaster and came to rest in the creek mouth. The vessel stayed there because the owner did nothing to remove it, DFO said it was not an environmental hazard and the Coast Guard did not consider it a threat to navigation.

"I've been reading the stories about it and couldn't understand why somebody wasn't doing something about it," Gage said. "I was annoyed about it." The Campbell River Salmon Foundation has worked on many salmon enhancement projects in recent years from Oyster River to the mouth of the Salmon River at Sayward, so Willow Creek is well within their mandate, Gage said. He said hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spend by DFO and others over the years to improve and protect creek estuaries from Oyster Bay through Campbell River, so it made no sense to leave the vessel to rot at the creek mouth.

He noted poll results in Friday's Courier-Islander showed 75 per cent of respondents wanted the boat removed.

"That really made up my mind over the weekend," he said.

Gage went looking for the owner of the boat. He said the previous registered owner apparently died last month. Gage said the new owner didn't object to the boat's removal.

"I got ahold of him and said 'we're going to remove it. It's in an estuary that doesn't have too many fish left in it but there are some fish there. If we carry on leaving things like that in there with (toxic) copper paint being scoured off the bottom (of the hull) because it's rubbing on the rocks now, there won't be any fish at all.'" Gage and Alec Wood of A Wood Bulldozing sized up the wreck Monday morning. They'd been told not to take equipment onto the beach, so a backhoe crept carefully out on the breakwater to get at the boat from there. Gage said the vessel couldn't be towed away because it was too full of holes and water.

"Wood's crew did an excellent job pulling it out," he said. "I'm very pleased with the work done by the hoe operator and his helper. We did find some fuel in one tank, probably less than five gallons. The two main tanks were both full of water. Somebody had had a fire inside it too. The excavator operator pointed out all this burnt wood inside it.

"God knows how much longer that thing would have stayed there (if it hadn't been removed)."

© Campbell River Courier-Islander 2012