The Columbia River Treaty Review team met with over 360 Basin residents during the consultation workshops held between November 14 and November 29 in eight Columbia Basin communities: Jaffray, Creston, Revelstoke, Golden, Valemount, Nelson, Trail and Nakusp. The session in Trail was streamed live and 17 people participated. In addition, the Treaty Review team met with area elected officials in meetings held in Cranbrook and Castlegar and with a community organization in Nakusp.

The Treaty Review team made a particular effort to encourage youth to attend the consultation workshops, contacting a number of high schools and instructors at College of the Rockies and Selkirk College.

The evening consultation workshops began with a welcome by a local government representative and a short presentation by the Province on an update of the Treaty Review process and studies undertaken in response to requests made in the May/June public consultation sessions including Kinbasket Reservoir Dam: Feasibility Overview, and Objectives and Performance Measures: Kootenay System Status Summaries.

This was followed by a presentation on the George Penfold report, A Review of the Range of Impacts and Benefits of the Columbia River Treaty on Basin Communities, the Region and the Province. In Creston there was also a presentation on Libby VarQ Flood Control Impacts on Kootenay River Dikes by Hamish Weatherly of BGC Engineering Inc.

BC Hydro then presented information from their models on the power, environmental, social, financial, and other impacts of operating the system to meet various interests identified by residents in the spring consultation sessions, under both Treaty Continues and Treaty Terminates scenarios. The evening ended with small group discussions where attendees discussed their perspectives regarding Treaty Continues, Treaty Terminates or Treaty Plus scenarios as well as their expectaions of the Province’s Columbia River Treaty Review process.

Workshop attendees also provided feedback to the Province on the upcoming technical conference, including preferred locations, length of conference and conference content.

A report compiling the feedback received from Basin residents from this round of community consultations is being developed. The report is expected to be completed by the end of January 2013 and will be posted on the Province’s Columbia River Treaty Review website, together with PowerPoint presentations and the material distributed during the community workshops, at http://blog.gov.bc.ca/columbiarivertreaty/community-sessions/