2005 news releases

Gravel bucket brigade
Courier-Islander (Campbell River)
Fri 15 Jul 2005
Page: A1 / Front
Section: News
Byline: Dan Maclennan
Source: Courier-Islander

Call it the high-tech, big-budget alternative to tossing stones into a creek. Call it heavy-lift, aerial gravel placement. Call it whatever you like, but don't call it simple, sloppy or haphazard.

Wednesday's Elk Falls Canyon Gravel Enhancement Project was a thundering exhibition of efficiency and precision flying.

"It went very well, even better than expected," said Mike McCulloch, fisheries technician with the Greater Georgia Basin Steelhead Recovery Plan. "We moved a little more material than I had thought we would."

That material would be about 150 cubic metres of pre-washed spawning gravel, stones in the 1-6 inch diameter range. About a fifth of it was placed just below the falls pool and the rest at a location about 600 metres downstream.

With McCulloch working his way along the lip of the canyon as a spotter, Helifor Industries Ltd. pilots Leroy Stewart and Ward Huntley finessed their huge Vertol 104 helicopter into the canyon time and time again with a custom-made gravel bucket at the end of a long line.

In the space of four and half hours they placed 67 loads of gravel into the canyon, an average of 8,430 pounds per load. That's more than 280 tons of rock.

"That is a lot of gravel," McCulloch said "Our pilots were excellent and I'd like to thank Helifor for that, and our ground crew performed admirably."
Up near the John Hart Dam, where the gravel was stockpiled, the ground crew, including BC Conservation Foundation (BCCF) staff, would have one of the buckets filled by a big excavator while the other bucket was being dumped. The system worked to perfection, with an average turnaround time in the four-and-a-half-minute range, all the more impressive considering the time taken to manoeuvre the big chopper down into the confines of the canyon.

BC Hydro's Bridge Coastal Restoration Program (BCRP) provided the $40,000 funding for the project. This is the fourth year of the project, aimed at restoring spawning gravel to a canyon that had become gravel-poor over the years as gravel washed out to sea was not replaced by gravel from upstream because of the John Hart Dam.

The immediate goal of the project Wednesday was to increase spawning habitat in the upper canyon and to increase spawning habitat throughout the canyon over the longer term as the gravel is washed downstream.
Swims of the canyon by McCulloch, Environment Ministry and BC Hydro biologists have confirmed that the gravel is well used by all five Pacific salmon species - including a small population of sockeye - as well as rainbow, cutthroat and steelhead trout. This latest gravel placement will be followed up with further swims in the fall and next spring.

BCRP has also funded a bulk gravel placement feasibility study to see if a ground-based system can be used to place a large quantity of gravel in the upper canyon to be spread downstream by the water during dam spill events.