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OPINION: Issues with Cheekye fan

Summer is the season for development. The more time we spend outdoors soaking up the sun, the easier it is to forget the cold. But the damp, dark winters and long, wet spring floods return every year.
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Summer is the season for development.

The more time we spend outdoors soaking up the sun, the easier it is to forget the cold. But the damp, dark winters and long, wet spring floods return every year.

A significant 1,215-unit development by Squamish Cornerstone Developments and the Squamish Nation passed second reading at a recent council meeting.  The project would be built on the Cheekye Fan, a land formation that is at serious risk of landslide, stream floods, land erosion, and unpredictable shifts in watercourse.

It’s a fair-weathered proposal.

Summer is here, and suddenly we forget that most of Squamish is on a floodplain, and that parts of Brackendale — including where this project would be built — are at risk in a landslide.

Why is council entertaining a proposal knowing that developing in that location is dangerous? In October, council released a comprehensive flood hazard management plan, a project they spent more than three years creating after consulting with experts and the public.

They also spent years creating the official community plan update which excludes this area from development. But a good plan is useless if council doesn’t follow its own advice, and if the public doesn’t demand their government keep its promises.

The fact council has allowed this proposal to go this far is disturbing. Approving this project would be demonstrating that all the engagement and all the research they’ve done is just for show. They’re going to do what they want anyway.

The key to council’s preliminary passing of the proposal is the developer footing the bill for building a necessary $45-million debris flow barrier.

The barrier would help reduce the risk to the current population of Brackendale, the province’s highway and two hydro substations, and schools.

Squamish should not be trading density for a barrier, something the provincial and federal governments should be paying for anyway.

Don’t pass this development, council. Don’t build there at all. Force the province and the feds to pay for the barrier.

While the province downloaded protection of dikes to the municipalities in 2005, this isn’t a dike. It lets water through, after all, it doesn’t hold it back. It holds back debris. A project as significant as this barrier should be commissioned by the government. The Alberta provincial government gave Canmore $10.3 million for a flood barrier following the catastrophic flood in 2013 that destroyed $50 million of homes and highways.

I would hope it doesn’t take a disaster like that for the B.C. government to provide us with similar protection. Should we have to put more lives and homes at risk to protect those who are already living there? There has got to be a better solution than what is currently on offer. Although there hasn’t been a major landslide in recent memory, climate scientists are only predicting more flooding, more fires, and more landslides in the future.

There are other areas where we can build new homes.

This is not the place or the deal we want.

 

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