Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band declares local state of emergency for eroding property

May 8, 2018 | 5:39 PM

SQUILAX, B.C. — A local state of emergency has been declared by the Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band for one property that’s being eroded by a creek in the Squilax area. 

Chum Creek has broken its banks over the last two weeks and has slowly eroded Charlotte Francois’ property. The erosion is feet away from her driveway, which is causing her great fear. 

“My biggest concern is that the creek is going to rise again through the snowmelt or the rain and I’m going to lose access to my house from my driveway,” says Francois. 

Francois says the creek has been flowing outside its regular channel for a couple weeks, but it’s only in the last week that Chum Creek has widened and eroded a big chunk of her property. 

“My cherry [blossom] tree is right inside the creek now,” she notes. “That is where my first concern was and that’s how much of the dirt that’s been washed away. I would like to get some gravel or some help to ebb the flow back to the creek.” 

The Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band, as well as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, were at Francois’ place on Tuesday, assessing the damage and coming up with a plan to fix it. Part of the plan was to declare the local state of emergency late in the day. 

“In declaring a state of local emergency, and this would only be in place for that one property that’s been affected by the creek re-routing itself, what that allows local government to do is leverage resource above and beyond what we’d normally have as a municipality or Indian band,” says Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band information officer Rhys Laug. “Funding for resources like bringing in a backhoe, excavators and so on.”

Francois says she’s been asking for this work to be done for the last year and she’s frustrated it took until disaster to strike to get things done. She hopes the work stops the erosion.  

“I think if we don’t ebb the flow back this way [towards the creek’s original channel], it’s going to continue to erode towards my house or make my house an island is what I’m scared of.”