The fate of Marshall Lake has been postponed, after a meeting last week in Greenwood.
The Ministry of Environment had originally slated the lake to be partially drained to lower the risk to the City of Greenwood and the surrounding area were the dam to burst. Marshall Lake had been designated a risk by the ministry.
City of Greenwood councilor Christopher Stevenson was optimistic about what happened at the meeting.“I think we had a significant success,” Stevenson says. “We got the commitment from the ministry that they will not deactivate this year, which gives us time to look and hopefully form some sort of group or society to bring stakeholders in, user groups and interested people together.”
Stevenson says that one of the things that was difficult about the timeline that the ministry proposed originally was that deactivation of the dam was to take place in a matter of months.
“They were talking about deactivation in August or July,” Stevenson says. “Which didn’t give enough time for anybody to look at options or to try to get people interested or committed to working on this.”
The meeting saw representation from Greenwood city council, the regional district, two representatives from the ministry, as well as MLA John Slater, participating by teleconference.
The provincial dam safety officer Bert Brazier and regional dam safety officer Mike Noseworthy also attended the meeting.
Stevenson says it’s important to have a forum for discussion for Marshall Lake because there are a lot of different groups who use the lake, for recreation, camping or as a reservoir for firefighting in the summer.One of those recreationalists, Marsha Payette from Greenwood, says that the lake is an important part of the area.
“It’s the only fruitful thing that’s been left for nature,” Payette says of the Phoenix area. “And nature has used it to turn it into a wonderful habitat.”
If the lake were partially drained, she worries it would become more of a bog and would lose some of its value to wildlife.