In B.C.'s forests, a debate over watershed science with lives and billions at stake

Ross Muirhead stood at the edge of a forestry cut block filled with stumps, rain pelting down as he watched water rushing over the barren ground.

The environmental advocate was storm watching during the atmospheric river disaster that swamped southwestern British Columbia in November 2021.

Muirhead says that without a healthy forest to help absorb the excess water, it was gushing toward a creek near the Sunshine Coast community of Halfmoon Bay.

“It was just complete surface run-off,” he says.

Muirhead went to see what was happening near the outlet of the creek and found highway crews already working — water and debris had caused a “complete engineering failure” of a culvert and the road on top of it, he says.