SICAMOUS – Taking your boat for a spin on Mara or Shuswap Lake is one of Sicamous’ main attractions, but finding a place to tie up your boat in the Sicamous Narrows is becoming a problem. Locals says low water levels and silt are drastically cutting down on the number of usable moorage spaces and some are now pushing for the channel to be dredged.
The conditions in the channel are impacting many marinas, including Three Buoys Marina which is in the business of mooring boats.
“The area is filling in and silting in and it is really affecting how many boats we can get in and affecting our bottom line and the future of our bottom line,” says Rob Bushell the owner of Three Buoys Marina and Storage Facility.
Condos with marinas on the water are also being impacted. Bill Anderson says 20 of the 52 slips at his condo complex are unusable.
Locals says new regulations that are coming into effect when marinas renew their leases are compounding the issue. At the condo complex where Mary-Ann Easton is the strata council president, they’ve already renewed. Easton says as a result of the new regulations their docks are now “blocked off” to keep them at least 1.5 metres from the bottom of the channel. This means the docks don’t drop down with the water level as floating docks would. Instead, when water levels are low, part of the condo complex’s marina is well above the water surface making it useless for boat moorage. Easton says by the third week of July, 37 of the 60 units in the complex didn’t have moorage spaces.
Easton is among those who now see dredging the channel as the best solution to fix the problem and protect local tourism.
“If we don’t see dredging happen here the water flow cannot go through and it is going to continue to silt more and more, the grasses are going to continue to get further out into the channel and we likely wouldn’t have even 50 per cent of the moorage that we have right now,” she says. “I love Sicamous, I have a great passion for it but I’m seeing it die a slow death because if they don’t have tourism here, they have nothing.”
District of Sicamous councillor Jeff Mallmes says the district is asking staff to investigate the possibility of dredging the narrows. The work by district staff would potentially lay the groundwork for locals to apply for permission from senior levels of government to do the work. He believes that if they get permission, money for the project could be found.
“I think if this council and our staff can’t get the channel dredged this time, it is probably never going to be dredged,” he says.
Locals say getting approval from Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been a sticking point in the past.
Global Okanagan asked DFO to comment on the situation. In an emailed response, a Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesperson discussed the types of permissions that may be required for dredging and pointed out that “Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not received a current application for an authorization or request for review for dredging in the Sicamous Narrows.”
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