For more than 100 years, Vancouver has been transforming from wilderness to metropolis, and dozens of salmon bearing streams have been sacrificed over the years while development took over.
But a new project is now underway aimed at bringing some of those streams back to life.
The project involves a complex process called “daylighting,” and environmentalists are hoping salmon won’t be the only species to return.
Today, only a couple of Vancouver’s streams support salmon runs, the rest have been covered by dark and dank concrete culverts.
That’s why Mark Angelo, founder of International Rivers Day, has started a new project to bring life back to some of the streams.
The project will free some of the streams from their concrete culvers, exposing them to daylight and other environmental elements.
“My hope is as redevelopment occurs that we will be able to open up some streams that have been lost and in some of them get salmon back,” Angelo said.
Angelo’s dream is about to come true at Hastings Creek and New Brighton Park, but there will be challenges because the culvert runs along a utility corridor.
One of the challenges in redeveloping the culvert is that it runs along a utility corridor.
The multi-million dollar project, funded by the City of Vancouver, will free Hastings Creek, which has been entombed for nearly a century.
“It’s not just water, but birds, the critters and wildlife that will be attracted to the stream, and such a contrast from the hard urban environment we’re in,” Dave Hutch, Hastings Park project manager said.
It will be done in three phases beginning later this month. The first stage will “daylight” 160 metres of the creek running from McGill to the train tracks in Brighton Park.
Phase two will unite the creek with Burrard Inlet and with any luck the salmon will find their way from the mouth of the creek all the way to phase three, a tranquil, man-made pond created 13 years ago.
The project will take about 10 to 15 years to complete the 1.2 kilometre length, Hutch said.
Daylighting a creek may be a lengthy and costly venture, but there are many who agree that nature is a priceless investment, and helping salmon return to the city’s streams is worth the effort.
“We’ll never get all of them back, but I do believe in time we’ll get some of them back,” Angelo said.
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