A committed group of community-minded citizens have teamed up with several partners to prevent chronic flooding in a longtime Naramata neighbourhood, while also re-establishing salmon spawning beds on Okanagan Lake.

The Chute Creek Stewardship Society has recently completed Phase I of a project to rehabilitate the creek by removing an old bridge and its surrounding infrastructure – including thousands of pounds of worn out concrete – and building a new bridge and replacing the concrete, said Dr. Peter Mortifee, a founder of the organization and chair of the board of directors.

The society was formed in 2018 to deal with issues after two consecutive years of flooding on Indian Rock Road in Naramata.

This coming summer starting in July, the second phase will begin and include establishing large spawning area for salmon within Chute Creek, said Mortifee.

“We’re a 100% volunteer organization, so we’re all working at it with the same good intentions,” said Mortifee, the leader of the five-member board of directors.

For those who have never been there, Chute Creek is located approximately 10 kilometres north of Naramata.

“The creek is located in the area commonly known as Indian Rock,” he said. “It’s a small community located out at the very end of North Naramata Road. When you get there, there ain’t no further you can go on that road.”

Starting back several years ago, a group of neighbours began meeting regularly as it was decided something had to be done to control chronic flooding of the creek, which resulted in endless problems for the property owners in this area, said Mortifee.

Phase 1 of the reconstruction process took place last year and involved tearing down an existing bridge and replacing it, he said.

“Phase I was basically moving the bridge over Chute Creek, which is located on Indian Rock Road and replacing it, then removing all the concrete from underneath and around the bridge,” he said.

What happened?

“The reason for our existence as a society is that back in the early 1960s, as water came down the banks, down the mountain from Chute Lake, it collected at the creek and caused a lot of problems.”

A flat area near Okanagan Lake, called an “illuvial fan”, which carried bedrock and other debris towards the lake for thousands of years, had been destroyed, he said.

“It has created this area, a little flood plain if you will.”

In the 1960s, developers came up with a plan to build a concrete channel in this flood plain area to direct water coming down from Chute Lake into Okanagan Lake, he said.

“As a consequence of that, it created the opportunity to subdivide the dozen building lots,” he said.

Fast forwarding to current times, the Indian Rock subdivision has been experiencing regular serious flooding, he said.

“The most recent major episode was in 2017 and then it got hit again in 2018,” he said. “That flooding occurred for two reasons. One, the bridge over the creek was inadequate to have the flows go underneath the bridge. So water was cascading over top of the bridge and would go over and flood the ground.

“Secondly, the actual concrete channel itself no longer had the capacity to carry the flows it needs to carry.”

The two years of flooding in 2017 and 2018 resulted in the concrete channel “reaching the end of its useful life,” said Mortifee.

“There was an actual failure at the end of the channel about 20 feet before the massive amounts of water went into the lake,” he said. “When that failed, it blew out into the lake and eroded all the adjacent properties and that was no fun and required major emergency repairs.”

The society was formed at this time knowing a game plan was needed to replace the bridge and upgrade the concrete channel.

“We had to protect our community from flooding because there was a very real risk of serious flooding in our community,” he said. “The second thing we’ve been doing, and we’ve been very committed to this from the very beginning, is we had to rebuild this creek using nature-based engineering solutions, so we could recreate proper conditions for the regeneration of the in-stream, natural ecosystem.

“In particular, we wanted a place where salmon and other species would want to come and spawn. Recreating this spawning area, while creating flood protection for the community has been the goal.”

New bridge is in

Working in collaboration with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, the old bridge was torn down and replaced this past summer. The ministry paid for the vast majority of the costs of Phase I, he said.

“The old bridge got removed, a new bridge got built and all the concrete underneath and around the bridge has been removed, revealing the natural creek bed, which hasn’t seen the light of day for almost 60 years,” he said. “It was a wonderful outcome as far as we’re concerned.”

The new bridge was “triple the capacity” of the old bridge to divert water away from nearby properties and towards the lake, he said.

“That alone, has gone a tremendous distance to protecting our community from flooding,” he said. “Phase 1 has been completed. We’ve got a spectacular new bridge in place with triple the capacity to handle water coming down to the lake and we’ve naturalized the area around the creek.

“Now we’re preparing to move into Phase 2 this summer.”

Phase 2 will include removing all the remaining concrete from the bridge to the edge of the lake and replacing it “with nature based, engineered solutions, which are going to allow us to protect the community from flooding, while concurrently naturalizing the creek and bringing back salmon to that creek for the first time in decades.”

Who else is on board?

The Penticton Indian Band is collaborating with the Society on this restoration project. The Penticton Indian Band has engaged Okanagan Nation Alliance Fisheries to work with the Society and advise the Band in anticipation of Phase 2 of the restoration.The Penticton Indian Band arranged for and funded a Cultural Heritage Resource Assessment of lower Chute Creek to assess the archaeological and cultural heritage of the site and provide recommendations.

“We connected with them right at the beginning, because as you can well imagine, salmon habitat for the local First Nations communities and creating more salmon spawning areas is a big deal,” he said. “They have been working so hard for several years to bring sockeye salmon stocks back into Okanagan Lake.

“Both groups have been heavily involved in this from very early on.”

The Penticton Indian Band arranged for and funded a Cultural Heritage Resource Assessment of lower Chute Creek to assess the archaeological and cultural heritage of the site and provide recommendations.

There has also been co-operation and support from more than one provincial ministry, he said.

Former MLA Dan Ashton, recently elected Penticton-Summerland MLA Amelia Boultbee and federal NDP MP Richard Cannings have also shown strong support for Phase 2 upgrades, he said.

“This has all been about trying to raise the profile of this urgent issue facing the community of Indian Rock to the broader community, so we could get the support we need to be able to come up with a good, integrated solution,” he said.

What’s next?

To move forward with Phase 2 has involved providing detailed environmental assessment and other documentation to different ministries and so far there have been no issues, said Mortifee.

“It basically sets out what we propose to do to rebuild this creek,” he said. “We’re just waiting to hear back from these ministries.”

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is also involved and must give approval, he said.

“The government agencies basically have to say they’re OK with what we’re doing … from an environmental perspective and a legal perspective,” he said. “All being well, we will be able to proceed with construction of Phase 2 starting in July and completing by October.

“We are extremely motivated to get this project completed this year. We are deeply motivated to keep this train moving down the track.”

The society has hired a renowned engineering firm, Mould Engineering, which specializes in creek redesign, to lead the way on Phase 2 and they have an exemplary history of success, said Mortifee.

Building bridges takes time

The results of a lot of hard work and collaboration have been very rewarding, said Mortifiee.

“This is not something that happened in the last six months,” he said. “It has been so many years in the making as the community realized we needed to do something. We’ve been at this a long time.

“A project of this complexity, with different government agencies, the First Nations partners, funding organizations, local community members has been way more than any of us realized when we first started this. It takes a community of people to make something like this happen. It has taken a broad spectrum of community and government support and we’ve gotten that and we’re extremely grateful.”

The third and final phase will begin in 2026 with a detailed stewardship plan to take care of the bridge and infrastructure, as well as the salmon spawning beds and riparian area, said Mortifee.

This article originally appeared in the Penticton Herald and is shared via the Local Journalism Initiative