Bill Green Interview – Modernization of the Columbia River Treaty & the Environment

Bill Green, director of the Canadian Columbia River Inter-tribal Fisheries Commission,  discusses the environmental aspect of the modernization of the Columbia River Treaty.

Title Screen: Circular logo on a black backdrop. Logo is an image of four waves turning into wheat on the left end. The title “Stories Beneath the Surface” is circled around the image in capital letters.

Interview with Bill Green – a bald white man with short grey beard. Wearing a red plaid shirt. He is sitting in a chair in front of the corner of a room. There are black and white photos on the wall.

Revelstoke Museum and Archives logo in the bottom right hand corner.

Transcript of Narration:

Well with, within the Columbia River Treaty negotiations, uh, we’ve been working the Canadian side in particular around, uh, restoring ecosystem function around our reservoirs and rivers that are affected by the Columbia River Treaty dams.

And, uh, when you start to look at that question, uh, you realize that our biggest ecosystem losses have been floodplain repaired and wetland ecosystems.

[Raises right hand, and points to the right] And, for me, the striking comparison is always between the Revelstoke reach, um, which of course for several months of the year is completely inundated by Arrow Reservoir and then it’s, uh, exposed again. [Gestures with hand, then stops]

And then of course compounded by the fact that we go from very low [puts hand out at a low level] river discharges to higher discharges [raises hand to higher level] almost every day sometimes of the year.

[Gestures with his hands] So, so there’s a large area that’s kind of neither fish [moves his hands to his left] nor foul [moves his hands to his left], it’s not land or it’s not water and it never has time to to fully function as a, as a terrestrial or repairing an ecosystem. So that’s what we see here at Revelstoke. [Raises both hands to his right]

The contrast for me and the most striking thing is, if you travel from uh Radium to Golden and, [moves his left hand across the screen] even more strikingly downstream further to Donald, you see very similar ecosystem that is not affected by a dam and is not inundated by a dam. So the Columbia wetland are this spectacular area.

Restoring those floodplain repairing and Wetland ecosystems is, you know, in my mind, a linchpin [raises right hand] of restoring ecosystem function so we can have a diverse array of vegetation as opposed to the monoculture we largely have out here now. [gestures with his hand]. And all the bird and animal species that that go along with that.