Our drinking water-once protected, now endangered
Ernest Albert Cleveland, 1926-52.
Historical highlights: Capilano, Seymour and Coquitlam Watersheds
1889 - First water main completed from Capilano catchment area across Burrard Inlet to Vancouver.
1905 - Coquitlam Lake dammed to provide first hydroelectric power for Vancouver.
1908 - First pipeline to draw water from Seymour River completed.
1920s - Expansion of logging in the three watersheds raises health concerns.
1922 - Ernest Cleveland, B.C. comptroller of water rights, completes report on Seymour and Capilano Valleys. Notes logging caused damage to drinking water supply and calls for an end to logging in these watersheds.
Capilano Timber Company clearcut logging in the early 1920s.
1925 - Summer fire in Capilano logging slash lasts for weeks. Burns 1,400 hectares and sparks great public protest leading to the creation of the Greater Vancouver Water District (GVWD).
1926 - Cleveland becomes GVWD's first commissioner. He launches a strict no-logging policy with the heartfelt statement: "They will log that watershed over my dead body."
1927 - The province of B.C. leases the Seymour and Capilano Watersheds lands to the GVWD for 999 years. With municipal money, GVWD begins buying our private holdings and mining and timber leases.
1942 - Despite Cleveland's objections, Ottawa orders chlorine be used to purify GVWD water based on a war-time request by the United States Navy.
1952 - After 26 years as GVWD Commissioner, Cleveland dies.
1953 - Cleveland's no-logging policy begins to crumble. The GVWD commissions a survey of watershed timber stands by forestry consultants C.D. Schultz and Co.
Over 40 foot in circum. Cedar, East Cap Creek, Capliano Watershed. Has it been cut down?
Meech Creek fir in centre, the tallest Douglas fir measured in Canada.
1956 - Schultz's pro-harvest report spurs the GVWD to re-consider its no-logging policy in the watersheds.
1958 - Loggers begin falling 195 hectares (487 acres) of timber to prepare for the Seymour reservoir.
1961 - Logging spreads outside the Seymour Reservoir basin as the GVWD adopts a policy that permits cutting of timber theoretically posing a fire hazard or threatened by an aphid infestation.
1967 - Lands Minister Ray Williston rubber-stamps GVWD request for permission to log watershed trees under an Amending Indenture to provincial lease.
1969 - GVWD compiles forest cover inventory of all watersheds.
1971 - GVWD becomes part of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) municipal government structure.
1972 - Roadbuilding and logging begins in the Coquitlam Watershed.
1977 - GVWD issues a report on restricted public access to the Capilano, Seymour and Coquitlam watersheds.
1979 - GVWD "formalizes" its road standards and begins work on a construction program to minimize the "potential for erosion and sedimentation."
1986 - Chlorine levels in local drinking water increase dramatically.
1988 - WCWC begins campaign against watershed logging.
"They will log that watershed over my dead body"
GVWD Commissioner Ernest Cleveland 19261989 - GVWD begins a comprehensive review of watershed policy, including its forest management program.
1990 - Drinking Water Quality Improvement Plan is introduced by GVWD to calm public concerns.
-WCWC publishes 100,000 copies of a four page newspaper titled HALT WATERSHED LOGGING.
1992 - GVRD issues a 10-week ban on watering gardens and summer lawns-a Lower Mainland first.
- Record-size redcedar and Douglas-firs are catalogued in the Capilano watershed.
-Some environmental protestors block logging trucks but logging continues.
1994 - GVWD holds public input sessions about water filtration and purification systems and commissions an ecological inventory.
