The original Garibaldi at Squamish (GAS) proponent, Wolfgang Richter, and members of the local GAS support group Friends of Garibaldi (FOG) are doing their best to reintroduce Richter's former and close-to-the-heart proposal from 1997.
Before the province made a decision about whether to grant the current GAS proposal an environmental certificate, which was sent back to the proponents requiring more information (see story page A7), Richter and FOG members made a request to present at Tuesday's (June 15) council meeting.
FOG wanted council to make it clear they still supported the 1997 proposal because they were under the impression the ministers were being asked to render judgment on both the 1997 and 2003 proposals.
"What's important to note is that it states very clearly in this EA report that was reviewed by the ministers that the current proposal and the 1997 application, collectively, are considered to be the application," said GAS board member since 1993 Janice Grimes.
"The fact that they combined them in my mind means that the 1997 application is considered to be just as active as the 2003 application," she said.
At the council meeting, FOG representatives Jeff Levine and Richard Tripp asked for the current council to reiterate that support.
"We want the District of Squamish to support the Garibaldi at Squamish project originally envisioned in 1997 and work with the EA office and proponents to develop a plan that would meet the district's Smart Growth and sustainable land-use planning framework," said Tripp.
According to FOG, the 1997 proposal had almost 90 per cent support in Squamish.
However, council declined to act, with Mayor Greg Gardner saying that council had responded to the current proposal as submitted by the proponent to the province.
On Friday (June 11), Environment Minister Barry Penner and Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Kevin Krueger decided not to issue an EA certificate and to extend the window for GAS to generate crucial missing information.
According to Penner, FOG and Grimes must have misinterpreted the EA report because the ministers were only reviewing the current proposal.
"I think the proposal has changed a lot since 1997 so what we were considering now was the most recent version of it," said Penner.
The current proposal is a four-season resort to be developed as a resort community similar to Whistler on 3,238 hectares of Crown land on Brohm Ridge north of Squamish. It would have up to 21,922 residential and commercial units, two golf courses, 25 ski lifts, 123 runs and a water supply system with five large dammed reservoirs.
The more modest 1997 proposal was slated for 2,580 hectares, up to 13,000 bed units and a daily skier capacity of only 12,000. There was only a small learning golf course, no development around the lakes and no highway development plan.
"If they wanted to submit a different one [proposal] they would have to check with the EAO," said Penner. "What we have before us is the current proposal that they took to the EAO and took to public consultation."
Despite the minister's decision, GAS supporters' mandate remained the same.
"Council has made it clear what they don't want but they need to make it clear what they do want," said Richter. Grimes, Tripp and Levine echoed his sentiments.
Friends of Garibaldi acknowledged that the current proposal, as it stands, has no support within the community but made it clear they didn't want the entire project swept off the table.
"I think there was an opportunity there for council to acknowledge what they did support rather than cancel the opportunity for the community to have a resort up there," said Grimes.
She and Wolfgang both said they would support scaling back the entire project to the 1997 proposal, though it hasn't been discussed with the other proponents yet because there has been no board meeting since the ministers announced their decision.
Grimes also suggested they could pick and choose parts of both proposals to come up with a project the community could get behind.
Richter said the proponents are still recovering from the shock of the EAO decision, but agreed with Grimes they would work on a new proposal that could be ready by the end of summer.
He was critical of council's decision not to support the motion and said there is a possibility the GAS proposal might just be scrapped. Despite he and Grimes support of the 1997 proposal, the decision would not be made solely by them.
"The writing is on the wall in this matter and it will come to a board decision," said Richter.
Levine made a point during the presentation of scolding council for withholding the socio-economic assessment study, which was paid for by the proponent and commissioned by council as an independent study.
The study, awarded to MMK Consulting and supposed to be completed by July 2009, is still in draft form according to Gardner. He also said a socio-economic study should have no impact on an environmental assessment.
Levine countered Gardner's argument, pointing out that public input could be swayed by generous financial benefits and public input was taken into account by the EAO.
"There's always going to be impacts," he said. "Those negative environmental impacts have to be balanced on the fiscal benefits side."
Gardner said he didn't feel socio-economic impacts were accurately assessed by the study because the study was based on what he called "speculative assumptions by the proponent."
