Residents of the Ring Creek community are concerned that having Triack Resources woodwaste recycling plant in their vicinity could pose a threat to their safety.
They named road access and the lack of a fire protection plan as main concerns, as well as noise and dust that would negatively affect the community.
Thirty-five residents live in the area year round with no fire protection, no power, no land lines and spotty cell phone service, not an ideal location for a fire-prone industrial site, according to long-time resident Kim Scobie.
Scobie has lived in the Ring Creek community for 13 years and sent her concerns to the Integrated Land Management Bureau (ILMB), which is currently reviewing Triack Resources' application.
According to Jennifer Carmona, a land technical officer at ILMB, they have to consult the First Nations groups in the area before making a decision on the application.
"We have a constitutional duty to consult on any application where there maybe aboriginal rights and then," she said.
In this case, the application is within Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Wautuh Nation's traditional territories and only after the dialogue will ILMB move towards making a decision.
"We aim to have all Crown land application decisions made within 60 days following the completion of the First Nations consultation," said Carmona. ILMB has sent referral request letters to both nations to begin consultations.
The application is also available online at ILMB for comment until June 17, and according to Cheekwan Ho at ILMB bureau they have received four comments so far, three against and one for the project.
Scobie's main concern is the fire protection issue because the proposed site is about four kilometres from their residential community, and their community has no fire protection and no plans to acquire any anytime soon.
"When we have a fire the Squamish firefighters don't even come," she said.
Deputy fire chief Mike Adams agreed, saying that dealing with fires outside the municipality was not part of their service.
He also "anything outside the municipal boundaries would have to go through the municipality because currently we do not have a mutual aid or service agreement in place with the SLRD," he said.
"As much as we would like to respond, if there were a fire we would have to got through the process of getting approval."
Even if they did reach an agreement, he couldn't estimate how long it would take to reach a fire up Ring Creek Road, but as a comparison said it would take between six and eight minutes to reach Quest University during the day, and 10 minutes or more during the night.
Triack Resources owner Dave McRae said any comment insinuating his business would create a fire hazard was completely wrong. He said the forest service actually suggested Triack put its facility in that area so they would be close to the fire problems created by forestry services and could easily deal with it.
"Forestry currently piles up all their wood waste for burning purposes and our company takes that fire hazard and grinds it up into a form that doesn't have the same ability to burn," said McRae.
"We're actually mitigating the fire risk potential."
She requested Triack's records regarding fires and violations through a freedom of information act and has been told it could take up to thirty days to receive that information, leaving her no time to comment before the comment period is up.
McRae said they never had a fire issue when they were operating in their previous site in the Cheekye Fan area, and have only had one instance since moving to the former Interfor site.
He said someone lit one of their piles on fire and though the whole pile wouldn't burn, the outside layer can.
"Within about 45 minutes the fire was completely taken care of," said McRae.
McRae called concerns about access to water fictitious and made up.
"We have a tank that we take to any of our job sites that is thousands and thousands of gallons, we also have a water truck that is set up for forestry standards with big fire pumps and everything on it and a creek to draw water from is directly adjacent to the proposed site," he said.
According to SLRD chief administrative officer (CAO) Paul Edgington, there are a number of communities in the regional district who don't have fire protection services but there are many more factors that would need to be addressed before Triack could use the site. He said ILMB could give them tenure, but it wouldn't address the zoning.
"The land is currently zoned as resource management under our OCP and resource use under our zoning bylaw and that does not permit industrial activities," said Edgington. "So if they [Triack] wanted to use it they would have to apply to re-designate the land in the OCP and re-zone the land for the intended use."
Edgington said other concerns that SLRD staff had was the potential for negative impacts to both the residential neighbourhood and the rural/residential area further up the road with things such as excessive noise, dust and increased traffic.
The traffic situation on Ring Creek Road, which is currently closed due to a landslide, was also one of Scobie's primary concerns. She said it was extremely dangerous, narrow and undependable.
McRae explained that the amount of woodwaste Triack processes per month is one barge load, so if they work 22 days per month, that means they would have less than three working trucks per day using that access road. He said the other activities on the road were "100 times" more disruptive than their usage would ever be.
Mayor Greg Gardner said district staff are working on re-opening the road because of its numerous essential uses.
"It is our intention to get there so that road would be open as it is an important road for access up to that area," he said, "but we're just in the planning stages right now."
Although the site is not on municipal property, if Triack's rezoning request did reach the SLRD board the district would be asked to comment.
