Valemount Community Forest gets “wake-up call” in recent audit
By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
The BC Forest Practices Board (BCFPB) found five significant non-compliances in the Valemount Community Forest (VCF) audit released on December 17th, including two non-compliances in wildfire prevention measures. VCF is taking steps to establish more thorough training and pre-work planning to avoid similar oversights in the future, according to General Manager Kalina Velez.
Based on observations of VCF activities from July 1st, 2021 through July 28th, 2023, the audit covered all VCF activities during a two-year timeframe, including harvesting, silviculture, construction and structure maintenance, among other activities.
While the audit found that VCF complied with most requirements set out in the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act, the number and scope of non-compliances found in the audit were “concerning”, according to the board’s report.
“The level of non-compliance found in this audit does not impart confidence that the licensee is adequately managing for legally required stewardship values,” the board commentary on the audit reads.
Two of these non-compliances were related to wildfire risk and protection. According to the audit report, the VCF failed to complete fire hazard assessments in a timely manner for 12 out of 18 cutblocks audited by the BCFPB – putting the community forest out of compliance with the Wildfire Act.
Additionally, the board found that the community forest did not establish fuel breaks – areas where wood and other fire fuel are removed, to prevent fire spread – around some slash piles it was burning, including three piles near the village of Valemount. In some cases, the fire spread beyond the slash piles and damaged trees in adjacent cutblocks.
“These non-compliances… point to systemic issues with the licensee’s fire hazard abatement practices,” the report reads.
Auditors also found issues with fire suppression measures. During the field audit, they discovered one water pump could not be started. While the contractor they were auditing had knowledge of fire risk and knew the procedure to follow if a fire started, the lack of a working water pump put the VCF out of compliance with the Wildfire Regulation.
Besides concerns over wildfire prevention and suppression, auditors found two significant non-compliances with the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation’s requirements for planning and designing bridges. Auditors found that three of the bridges the VCF had built lacked proper documentation – while they did not have concerns over the safety of these bridges, the report notes that the documentation process is important for ensuring that bridges are safe for industrial use.
In another case, auditors found that guardrails had detached from a bridge. According to the audit, the VCF was aware of the detached guardrails but did not repair them before using the bridges for industrial traffic. While the rails were not load-bearing and did not affect the structural soundness of the bridge, they provide drivers with a visual guide to know when they are approaching the edge of a bridge, the report says.
Finally, auditors found a significant non-compliance with the requirements for harvest reporting outlined in the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation. The VCF reported 24 harvested cutblocks during the audit period, eight of which were reported late or were missing information.
“As it affects one-third of cutblocks sampled, this issue is pervasive and considered a significant non-compliance,” the report says.
An “alarming” number of non-compliances: BCFPB
While forestry is a complex industry and any given operation may have a handful of issues, the number of non-compliances found in VCF’s operations were alarming, said BCFPB Chair Keith Atkinson. In his experience, the board typically finds two or three non-compliances – rarely does it find five or more.
“Once you get up over five to seven, we’re starting to get concerned,” Atkinson said. “Not only about the number of non-compliance issues, but the spectrum of them: it crosses over from the planning to the wildfire [prevention] to the reporting. It covers a few of the major categories that raise our concern.”
In particular, Atkinson expressed concern about the non-compliances related to bridge design and maintenance. The board has been focusing on increasing compliance with bridge safety and design practices across the province for over a decade, Atkinson said: in 2013, the board released its first special investigation on road and bridge practices, followed by a 2019 investigation on bridge planning, design and construction.
While the 2019 report found that structural soundness and safety had improved, with over 90 per cent compliance with safety requirements, the board also found that one-quarter of bridges examined lacked completed plans. Additionally, only 74 per cent of structures had record drawings – part of the engineering plan that must be submitted for a bridge to be approved – and only 85 per cent of those drawings were accurate.
Incomplete or missing bridge plans are a problem the Forest Practices Board is still fighting today, Atkinson said. This is often because foresters increase the length of culverts in an effort to make them safer, according to Atkinson.
“When a road builder decides to overbuild a culvert and make it a more sound structure … it’s a good practice, but not to the point where it becomes a span that needs an engineer’s approval,” he said.
This was the case in the VCF audit: two culverts had been expanded to be over six metres across, the length that classifies a structure as a bridge. Atkinson hopes forestry professionals will take note of this example and ensure all structures have proper documentation.
Wildfire prevention and safety is also top of mind for Atkinson – especially for operations near communities, as is the case with VCF. He found lack of fuel breaks and non-functional water pump worrisome.
“The burn piles skated a bit into standing timber – that’s really alarming. We need everybody to be paying attention to that,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ve come out of three years of drought and really bad wildfire seasons in the province. But out in the forests of B.C., we’ve got many years ahead of us with high risk conditions.”
According to Atkinson, the board’s auditing process included an extensive fact-checking process wherein the board worked with VCF management to make sure its understanding of the VCF’s practices was accurate. This is in part why the report was not published until recently – typically, audits have about a year of turnaround time between when field observations are completed and when the report is submitted, he said.
“We schedule our field season in the summer to get out on the ground,” Atkinson said. “Then we come back and work on things during the winter for reporting. So it’s typically an annual cycle for us, in a sense.”
All bark and no bite
While the BCFPB is tasked with ensuring that forestry operations are managed safely and sustainably, the board does not have the power to enforce its recommendations, said BCFPB General Counsel Nathan Murray. Legal consequences, such as issuing tickets or imposing fines, are left up to the Ministry of Forests, Murray said.
“Once in a while, a board report will trigger that process where the compliance and enforcement branch [of the Ministry] will see that report and think, ‘Okay, there’s something for us to go look at here,’ and they’ll pursue an administrative penalty or something like that,” he said.
In an email statement to The Goat, the Ministry of Forests confirmed that the Ministry is reviewing the audit of VCF. However, the Ministry did not provide a timeline for when it would complete its review of the audit.
A wake-up call for VCF: General Manager
Regardless of whether the Ministry addresses the issues outlined in the report, VCF is taking steps to correct them, said VCF General Manager Kalina Velez.
“It’s a wake-up call for us,” Velez said of the audit. “Once you start operating on such a large land base, things get missed – not purposely, but it happens. It’s nice to have an auditor come in and pinpoint our weaknesses and what we should be focusing on.”
While Velez was not working at VCF during the audit period – she started her position as general manager in August 2024 – she says the audit’s results are still relevant. Issues requiring immediate correction, such as repairing the broken water pump and ensuring bridges were appropriately documented, were quickly addressed by the community forest’s previous management, according to Velez.
Now that Velez is at the helm, she has turned her focus towards drafting and revising policies that will improve the VCF’s practices in the long term. For example, she has revised the pre-work approval process to include more detailed site mapping and a pre-work form with clearer expectations for safety standards, waste management, and risk assessment. Additionally, she hopes to hire experts who can supervise on-site operations once or twice a week. This will give VCF a chance to nip problems in the bud and improve its communications with contractors, Velez says.
Velez hopes that providing more thorough training and inviting questions and feedback from contractors will improve their practices without having to turn to punitive measures.
“Accountability on the contractors’ side is definitely something I will be going after,” she said. “But also, to be fair, we will provide them with very thorough, proper training to ensure they understand what the requirements are.”
This training, along with an all-hands meeting to discuss the audit and the policies Velez is implementing, will take place sometime around April, she said. In the meantime, she is working with contractors to clearly explain the VCF’s expectations for safety and planning, she says.
That kind of collaboration with contractors is crucial for forestry operations looking to improve their practices, Atkinson said.
“It’s a complex world out there. You need to have a good team of professionals and managers to develop plans and see them implemented properly,” he said.
Velez echoed Atkinson’s sentiments.
“The guys are doing really well. They’re trying, and there’s improvement I can already see,” she said. “Ultimately, we’re all in this together.”
