In an effort to be heard, the Glade Watershed Protection Society (GWPS) has filed court documents which were served to Atco Wood Products, Kalesnikoff Lumber Company, and the Interior Health Authority January 22, 2019: these court documents were an application for injunctive relief and it is scheduled to be heard on February 4, 2019. The injunctive relief is a request that logging be legally deferred until the Judicial Review of the IHA’s decision has been made, and/or until a Forest Practices Board Investigation is completed.

Court Injunction Application
Rossland BC Court Feb 4, 2019
   The lawyer for the watershed Society was the first to speak. In her comments she called for “a cautionary approach - time, before logging commences for the forest to be properly assessed by a possible revisit of Section 29 (initiated by the GWPS) and for the Forest Practices Board investigation to be finalized.”  Ms Lysenko asked for an injunction to defer logging until investigations have been finalized.  She was arguing that irreparable harm would be done to our water and our community if logging went ahead.

   Atco and Kalesnikoff  lawyers presented their statements, which included comments:  “They only want to stop logging.  They are not really concerned about their water.  We have spent $150,000 of unrecoverable dollars planning, 50% of logging takes place in watersheds in the Kootenays.  It’s sustainable, and, whatever happens can be fixed…their water is already non potable, irreparable harm would be done to our companies in terms of financial losses, we have bent over backwards to accommodate them…”

    The hearing lasted for over 3 hours on Monday and Justice Tammen gave his decision on Thursday, Feb 7 at 9:15 in the Rossland courthouse.  The decision was dismissed. Court costs were requested and awarded to KLC and Atco
In addition, Judge Tammen, BC Supreme Court, stated that the risk of harm to Glade Creek water does not “rise above the level of speculation.” In his judgement, Judge Tammen stated that if the injunction were granted, the timber companies would suffer “irreparable” injury due to “obvious economic harm".

    April 1, 2019: An application to bring forward a judicial review of the IHA was halted by KLC and Atco's lawyers when they applied to court to demand that the Glade Watershed Protection Society (GWPS) raise the funds necessary to pay the legal costs of losing the case in order to proceed (!).  That meant, if we wanted to proceed with an application for a judicial review of the s.29 against Atco and KLC, we had to have $15,000 in trust to pay the legal costs of Atco and KLC in case we lost. We couldn’t raise $15,000 in 60 days, so that application was dismissed before even being heard.