In deciding to kick-start downtown revitalization by developing stronger links between the Mamquam Blind Channel waterfront and the commercial core, Squamish council is putting itself (or perhaps future leaders) between a rock and a hard place - which is to say, commercial interests and environmental ones.
There's little doubt that if you want to encourage locals and visitors to meander unimpeded between a revitalized waterfront and a vibrant commercial core, you don't want your town's main truck route running smack-dab down the middle. So it's important that an alternate be found - not only for trucks headed to Squamish Terminals but to logging operations that remain along the Blind Channel.
Since 1999, the Seventh Avenue connector has come up time and again as the proposed solution. Problem is, the new roadway - carrying mostly heavy truck traffic - would run right through the Squamish Estuary, an ecologically productive area that serves as home to many migratory birds and eelgrass while acting as flood protection for the downtown core. We should all be like Brackendale's Mary Mitchell who, when the topic came up for discussion in 2009, wrote in a letter to The Chief, "If the estuary is worth protecting under a WMA [Wildlife Management Area] designation, then how can we possibly agree that a road dissecting a significant portion of it is a good idea?"
Recently, Squamish council sent a letter to CN Rail asking the company, which had announced it was spending some $2 billion to upgrade its tracks and crossings nationwide, to consider spending some of that in Squamish - upgrading, among other things, the tracks through the estuary, where a CN locomotive spilled some 5,000 litres of diesel fuel last November. Building in the estuary isn't ideal, of course, but if the route running right next to the rail line and were built at the same time as a track upgrade - including better spill containment structures - it could save money while reducing the impact of a future spill.
Whatever they decide, local leaders will have to keep both economic and environmental interests in mind as they consider how to resolve a perplexing geographic challenge.
- David Burke
