Tag: Acting Locally

One More Open House

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I have said about all I can about the UBE prior to tomorrow’s final Open House/Workshop, so I will keep this brief. Before you attend (and you are attending, right?), I hope you will read these three things:

Monica Hardjowasito’s impassioned letter to the News Leader. I have not met Monica personally, but she obviously has been paying close attention to the process , and has come to some very reasoned conclusions.

Reena Meijer Drees’ comments on her new blog. As the “Postergirl” for consultations on this project, Reena shares her characteristically frank opinions on the project and the process.

Most importantly, review the minutes from the December 13 Council Meeting where Council made it very clear that they wanted to see a holistic solution, that includes an assessment of the long term issues with traffic capacity in this City. That is what you should have in your head when evaluating the project TransLink offers up on Thursday, as that is the first bar this revised project has to get over.

Enhancement, mitigation; tomay-toe, tomah-toe.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

Now that the “Community Concepts” have been developed, TransLink is emphasizing the “Community Enhancements”. Which sound much better than “mitigation”. The latter is about trying to reduce the inevitable negative impacts (and is, of sorts, an admission that there will be negative impacts that require mitigation), the former sounds like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. Too bad I’m lactose intolerant.

click to make big

It didn’t build my confidence when the slide they showed to demonstrate model enhancement is an image of a Canada Line station and No. 3 Road in Richmond. As someone who rides a bike through Richmond on a regular basis, I’m not afraid to say the No 3 Road bike route shown in the image is a disaster. It is partly a raised and painted separated bike route, except for all the commercial driveways crossing it that are almost all blind due to the location of the support towers for the overhead SkyTrain line. Once or twice a block, the painted route becomes a bus stop (see the image). Then right at the station, the bike route becomes the favoured pedestrian route around the station itself. So the Canada Line Bike Route is a recipe conflict between bikes and cars, bikes and busses, bikes and pedestrians. A waste of money that doesn’t serve the community it is built for. Let’s hope we don’t end up with the same thing here.

So let’s look at some of the baubles we are being offered.

This leaf-spring overpass plan seemed to be a major part of the discussions. With the level rail crossing at Braid closed, an alternative plan for getting people not in cars across the tracks is required. The challenge is making a structure suitable for pedestrians, cyclists, and people with mobility issues. Stairs are reliable, elevators are accessible. Long ramps wrapped into loops are both, but make for a large structure and turn crossing the street into a 2-kilometre journey.

To me, this is the ultimate expression of a “bauble”. We are trying to have a discussion about the implications of doubling the traffic entering New Westminster from the East, and TransLink engages us in a long discussion about what flavour of pedestrian overpass we want. No wonder the crowd was getting restless. This kind of design element can be discusses long after there has been a decision to build or not to build. At best, it is a waste of engineering time, at worst, it is a distraction from the real story.

I do note that all of the “enhancement” images showed “Concept B1”. This led more credence to the theory that TransLink has already decided which option they will be taking forward.

There was also much discussion of “edge” concepts. No surprises here, everyone thought trees and planters were better than… um… no trees or planters (again, why are we talking about this now?). Absent from the drawings were the 75 kV power lines that run along the west side of Brunette, and the communications lines that run along the east side: those trees are either going to be very short (10 feet is the safe approach limit from BC Hydro), or the lines will need to be moved (not a minor task).

Anyway, good to know that replacing roadways with green space, or at least separating people from roads with green space, is about the only thing that received unanimous support…Maybe we can all agree on something.

Now let’s talk about the wall. One of the early concerns from the Sapperton Neighbourhood (other than the knocking down of their houses) was the impact on the neighbourhood of an elevated truck highway in front of their homes. To manage this concern, TransLink is offering a noise wall, even suggesting that it can be a “green wall”, with vertical plantings to make it more attractive.

I have nothing against a Green Wall per se, but the high angle view shown above doesn’t give a very good impression of how high the wall would have to be to provide adequate noise abatement to not just the properties on Rosseau, but those up on Wilson, or Garrett. (Here is a bit of a primer on vehicle noise from some specialists in the field). Much of the noise of these trucks is produces at the exhaust, 2 or 3 metres above the road, and Sapperton slopes up from t his road, creating line-of-sight challenges the further up the hill you go. I’m not saying an effective wall cannot be built, but the visual effect of the wall, on top of the height required for the overpass to clear the rails and the SkyTrain at the Dip, is starting to add up to a pretty big wall.

Just for perspective, here is a photo of the Skytrain swooping through the “Dip”. The white Sky Train Mark I train is about 2.5 m high from the top of the wheels to the roof. So picture another 2.5 m or so for the overpass structure, then another 3m or so for a Green wall.

Personally, I’m hoping we can take a closer look at Option “E”, and the long-dismissed Option “C”. I guess we will know on Thursday.

UBE – endless consultations

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

It has taken me forever to get this post written, at least partially because of the Blogger hiccups of the last couple of days. More, though, I am not even sure how to approach this topic again. The TransLink consultation process on the United Boulevard Extension is wearing me down. Like many others, I am finding it frustrating.

TransLink is holding these consultations for good reasons. They want the best possible plan to take to New Westminster City Council, to maximise their chances of getting this thing approved and built. However, during all of this polishing of concepts, engagement of the local residents, planning, visioning, and conversing, they continue to miss the main point. The more that talk about alternate orientations, noise abatement walls and pedestrian overpasses, the more they avoid the real issues that got them into this mess. It wasn’t the colour of the noise abatement wall that caused New Westminster City Council to send them back to the drawing board in late 2010, it was the lack of a justification for the project in light of the negative impacts on the City, and the lack of a comprehensive plan to manage traffic west of the project.

This frustration was exemplified during the April 30th Workshop when the facilitator asked that everyone “put aside the UBE vs. no UBE debate”, and then flatly declared that it would be difficult to “get full agreement from everybody on anything”. I don’t think I was the only one in the room who thought this discussion isn’t about getting full agreement from everyone, it is about deciding if this plan to spend $170 Million of taxpayers money is going to fix anything, or is going to just make things worse for Sapperton and the rest of New Westminster.

Forever the sport, I will play TransLink’s game, I’ll try to keep the discussion here on the UBE concepts as they were presented at the Workshop.

Most of the background info provided in the presentation was familiar to people who attended previous meetings. Notably, the results of earlier consultations are filtered through TransLink’s lens. An example of this is on Slide 8 of the presentation:

When they say that the community noted “positives and negatives about Concepts B1 and B2” or “Interest was expressed in E1 and developing an E2 Option”, they are being selective in their interpretations. From the conversation I had coming out of the last meeting, most people wanted to see better justification for tossing Concept C aside, and none thought B1 was any better (and was potentially worse) than the old “T junction” that was rejected in December. The E option was preferred by everyone I talked to (except those who still thought the best option was to build nothing).

I have already posted on the Christmas Gift List of the proposed “improvements” to Front Street, so I will avoid repeating myself.

Click to zoom in

The plans further east, including plans to improve the Spruce Street intersection, are a new twist, however. This has not come up before in these discussions, and provides an interesting contrast to removing the rail crossing at Braid – they want to increase truck traffic at a level crossing a kilometre west of where they are spending $170 Million to eliminate a level crossing for truck safety? That said, the proposed improvements for Columbia at Braid would result in significant improvements to the traffic flow, discourage trucks from going along East Columbia, and potentially improve the Central Valley Greenway. The City should look at this option for that intersection ven after the UBE has finally been killed.

Refined Concept B1:
Note I didn’t call it a “community concept” like TransLink does. I’m not going to sugar-coat this: these concepts are coming from TransLink, not from the Community. If I go to Key West Ford and Jaimie tries to sell me a black F-150, but I pick one out with white paint and alloy rims, it doesn’t make me the guy who designed and built the truck. I’m just the guy who bought it. It is still a Ford.

click to zoom in

This is the plan that TransLink wants to build (there, I said it). The problems should be obvious to anyone following this story. The size and scale of the overpass will impact much of Sapperton. Only a few properties will be directly damaged, but the large overpass will be in dozens of backyards. This is really just a warmed-over version of the earlier rejected concepts.

The new twist that makes this even worse for Sapperton is the re-design of Brunette, where two lanes from the freeway shrink to one just north of the overpass. This will of course result in a merge zone backup. And what happens every morning when that backup gets as far as Braid? The traffic will natural bail out and go up Braid and wind its way through New Westminster neighbourhoods, the “rat running” that Sapperton was hoping to see come to an end. The back-up of vehicles coming east along Brunette and headed for the Freeway will be just as bad as they need to drop to a single lane. So much for free-flowing traffic on Brunette.

TransLink’s response to this was that the drivers will instead go over the overpass and take United Boulevard. This seems fanciful, considering anyone headed for the freeway or points east is not going to want to drive 5 km along a 4-lane commercial street with stop lights, past furniture stores, the casino, and the new Fraser Mills residential neighbourhood with it’s 10,000 commuters in order to get onto the 10 lane freeway that is less than a kilometre away…Or am I missing something?

Refined Concept B2:

click to zoom in. Do I have to keep saying this?

This project takes most of the negatives of B1, with the exception that it doesn’t cause as much back-up on Brunette. As a trade-off, it impacts more New Westminster industrial land, builds a set of intersections with significant navigation challenges to cyclists (It took 10 minutes for me to show the TransLink representative that the routes for bikes here just didn’t work out). Worse, it completely cuts Braid Station off from the rest of the community and points east. This design also looks like it will cost TransLink 2 or 3 times as much as the original design, with that much more elevated overpass construction, much of it over working rail yard. This may represent a cost equal to the Evergreen Funding Gap.

Refined Concept E1:

Guess what happens when you click

This concept definitely has more community support than the “B” concepts, mostly because it has much lower impact on the residential and commercial properties in Sapperton (but possibly a bigger impact on the Industrial properties is it meant to be servicing). TransLink has suggested the location of a new light-controlled intersection between the Freeway and Braid presents congestion challenges that may not be surmountable, and it is hard to argue against that point. Perhaps there is a creative solution to be found in creating an interchange where the intersection is currently shown on Brunette, but it got me wondering if it might just be easier to make it only two lanes instead of four. If the purpose is to bypass the level crossing at Braid, isn’t two lanes enough to still “free up traffic”?

Community Concept E2:

Don;t click this one, or it will zoom in.

This one did actually come from the community. There are a few problems with how it was worked up by TransLink (mostly, there is no need for the new intersection at the west end of the golf course – just direct traffic to the Braid Industrial area along the “old” United Boulevard and the Bailey Bridge, and direct the through-traffic along this new road). The big advantage is that the land being removed from the property tax rolls here is in Coquitlam, where they want this road, not in New West, where we don’t. TransLink suggested there were engineering challenges building a road on the old landfill (to which my answer was –yeah. So? Wasn’t Highway 1 being build on old landfills? And sections of the SFPR? And IKEA?). But the major point to make with this concept is that it looks better than E1 because it is closer to the Freeway. In fact, moving it to the north side of the Golf Course makes it look better yet. This road looks better the closer you push it to the Freeway, which again raises the question of why not just put the Trucks on the Freeway, and keep them off of local roads?

Refined Concept E3:

is this caption redundant?

Uniquely combines all the negatives of the other plans with increased cost, and no apparent gain. Dead in the water.

One concept that did not come up for discussion was presented by Voony on his Blog:

This offers all the advantaged of the “E”s, and actually frees up movement around the Braid interchange without increasing road capacity.

And it is not that unusual, and multi-lane roundabouts are now the MOT’s preferred method to deal with these type of geometrically-challenged intersections, or those that need smoother flow without increased road capacity… sound familiar?  Voony even offered and example from France:

An example closer to home that eerily similar to the Brunette interchange issues can be found in Chilliwack.

Well, those are my opinions the “refined” options, but much of the Workshop was on the topic of mitigation details, and fancy garlands they plan to hang on the sides of the overpasses to make them pretty. My frustration is turning into a headache, so I will save that for another post…

Short post on a positive development

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

I think this is good news for the City. Yeah, it is just a warehouse, but it is a huge warehouse: at almost 12 acres, it will have a 20% bigger footprint than BC Place. The few dozen jobs it provides are less important than the security of knowing that New Westminster’s largest industrial employer is investing further in the community. It is also good to have brownfields put back into the industrial tax base.

Go ahead, call me a faux environmentalist for saying good things about a stinkin’ paper mill, but Kruger is an example of value-added manufacturing for our domestic renewable resources, and have taken many steps to reduce the environmental impact of their products. Kruger is one of the leading producers of paper products from post-consumer fibres (that stuff you put out in the blue box). Here in New Westminster, they recently invested in a biomass gasification system to vaporize then burn scrap wood and paper and reduce their need for fossil fuels. Making paper can, ultimately, become a sustainable industry, and these small steps are heading that way down that very long road (maybe if we can all stop demanding that the paper we use to wipe our privates is whiter than the drifting snow? Ah, never mind)

As a caveat, any time you talk about a half-million square foot warehouse, you need to talk about how things are going in and out of the warehouse. This may represent a significant amount of truck traffic coming to the area of Queensborough that is already suffering from a freeway pushed through the middle of it and all the congestions, noise and emissions that come with it. The good news is that the Queensborough Landing site has two advantages: an adjacent rail spur, and an adjacent river. The river especially opens up and exciting opportunity: this could be a model situation for short sea shipping. The Kruger plant is 5km from this new warehouse by road (and that includes in increasingly-congested Queensborough Bridge), but it is less than 2km by the North Arm of the Fraser River. Kruger can reduce it’s greenhouse gasses and fuel costs significantly by using small barges to move goods between the two sites along a lightly-used piece of tidewater. This seems like a no-brainer, but I say this without knowing what regulatory nightmares Port Metro Vancouver might put in their way. It seems PMV is more interested in moving trucks around these days than dealing with actual floating things. Kruger has demonstrated an interest in being environmentally innovative in the past, let’s hope they follow through here.

Call it greenwashing if you want, but compared to some industry’s approach to the environment, it is good to see new Westminster’s largest manufacturer taking measurable steps in the right direction.

I’m not just saying that because they sponsor curling. But it helps.

On a Four-Lane Front Street (UPDATE!)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

I haven’t blogged on the topic of the fourth TransLink Workshop on the UBE yet, mostly because I waiting for TransLink to put the materials from the latest workshop on line (which they have just done!). so I will get on that next and discuss at length the latest coat of polish applied to that particular pair of old shoes.

In the meantime, I want to address the bigger issue, the one that seems to be the source of much of the push-back on the UBE: the idea that the UBE may worsen our traffic problems City-wide, not make them better. For the first time during these workshops, TransLink brought some materials to address this concern. As part of their pre-workshop presentation, Delcan presented a single PowerPoint slide that showed how they plan to address the NFPR in New Westminster. It was short on detail (there was not timing or budget mentioned) and there were no graphics except an image of the current proposed NFPR route with word-clouds pointing to several proposed improvements, paraphrased here:

1) Widening Front Street to 4 lanes;
2) Re-aligning the intersection at Columbia and Brunette so that Brunette is a continuous road and Columbia joins it at a “T”;
3) Doing a similar realignment at Front so that the Front Street-Columbia-east connection is a thoroughfare, and Columbia Street-west joins at a “T”;
4) Again making the Front Street-to-Stewardson a straight shot with Columbia meeting it at a “T” west of Hyack Square;
5) Tearing down the Parkade; and
6) Re-aligning several intersections on Stewardson, including Royal Ave.

Click to zoom in, TransLink’s Christmas Wish List.

At this point, this list is akin to my thumbing through the toy section of the Sears Christmas Catalogue when I was 7 years old and checking off the toys I wanted (Lego: check! Matchbox cars; Check! Smash-up-Derby? Check! Hungry Hungry Hippos? Why not!; Millennium Falcon? Double Check!). There was about an equal amount of planning and budgeting for how I was going to get those Christmas presents as there is here.

Making Front Street four lanes is going to take significantly more than a sweep of the hand or drawing a grey dotted line on a map. As much as I agree that White Elephant Parking Inc. should go, it is hardly the only limiting factor here. As Matt Laird keeps asking: are you going to move the Keg building and the Sally Ann, or the rails? Where the rail grades separate to the east; which of the two is going to have to go? What of the rail and Skytrain underpasses? Currently there isn’t room for a sidewalk on Front, and you want to install two more driving lanes?

Then there are the intersections. East Columbia at Front has no room for a T-intersection, as the tight “Y” there now is sandwiched between rails and (I kid you not) a “Heritage Wall” whose ultimate immovability has been used by the City to argue against pedestrian- and cyclist-safety improvements at Columbia and McBride. At the other end, what will Hyack Square look like attached to a new T-intersection onto the truck route?

And I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but since the recent traffic calming around Stewardson between 3rd Ave and 5th Ave, the traffic back-up getting onto the Queensborough has noticeably expanded, as has the back-up on 6th Ave to get to the bridge, and the congestion coming off the bridge down the hill along Stewardson. With a less-fettered through-shot to Freeway offered by a doubling of Front Street, does anyone imagine that Stewardson is going to see less traffic? When (or more importantly, where) is this game of Whack-a-Mole going to stop?

Through this very few people are asking the City if they even want an inevitably-congested 4-lane limited access road cutting the City off from it’s waterfront forever. For too many people, it is taken as inevitable that this will happen, and we need to manage the “mitigation” as best we can.

Please people, take a trip to Downtown Seattle before you make that call. If you lack travel funds, but have some imagination, just go down to the Front Street Parkade and look at the ass end of the businesses on Columbia: wood that hasn’t seen paint in 50 years, bricks swollen with too many layers of peeling paint, tarps keeping the leaks out, broken or boarded up windows, rusty chain-link and barbed wire, graffiti, garbage, shopping carts, blackberries and ivy…

This is our City’s waterfront. Despite the efforts of the Antique Alley merchants, it is a dark and dismal place. In many areas, the general dilapidation is embarrassing, and will only become more so as the Pier Park draws people down to the river: this is what they will see when they look back. This will be the face of New Westminster to those visitors.

Now tug at the braids of your imagination a bit and think about what could be.

It could be full of vibrant businesses and comfortable homes, just as Columbia Street is. It could be opened up to let the sunlight in and the exhaust out. It could be made pedestrian friendly, it could be safe and attractive. The empty parking bays could be courtyard restaurants, or pocket green parks. The Antique Alley businesses could see walk-by customers again. The entire downtown could be improved with new high-value commercial real estate providing jobs and tax revenue.

We don’t need to completely remove Front Street or the rails to do this, there is plenty of room for two lanes of Front, three rail lines, and a wide sidewalk with trees, planters, and even curb-side parking and café seating. White Rock’s boardwalk doesn’t suffer greatly from the existence of rails, it actually adds some charm to the location, and here rails can serve as homage to the City’s proud history as a working waterfront.

Put a 4-lane express route through there, you can kiss this bright future of Front Street goodbye. That would be a shame.

With transit-and pedestrian-oriented development along Columbia, including the MUCF, the Inter Urban, Plaza 88, and with the road diet on Columbia and resultant accessibility of the businesses, there is a resurgence of the Heart of our City. You can’t argue with the business development, with the people on the street, with the positive vibe down there, a sharp contrast to 20 years ago. I can’t shake the feeling that we are approaching a tipping point, though, and the opportunity exists now to build on that momentum, and grow the Heart of the City down to the water, to link it to Quayside and the resurgent River Market, to continue building the Heart of the City up 6th to the new high rise developments (and beyond?), and west to connect to Columbia Square (and beyond with the re-purposing of lower 12th?). Or we can let New Westminster remain a place of unrealized promise, much like it was for the second half of the 20th Century.

The UBE is the beginning of the NFPR process, and I have said before and will say again: no single project is going to have as big an impact on the future of our City than the NFPR. So let TransLink figure out if it is technically or economically feasible to complete (many of us clearly have doubts), but in the meantime, this City has to start discussing whether it is socially feasible.

So much for the Secret Ballot

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I’m throwing my lot in with Tenth to the Fraser here, and am supporting Fin Donnelly this election.

To many people who know me only from this Blog, that is probably not a surprise. I come across as a soft leftie big-government tax-and-spend environmental whack job (or so I am told). However, it is a surprise to most people who know me, including myself.

I have never voted NDP in my life, and I have voted in every federal election since 1988 (When I voted for the PCs, who with the benefit of hindsight, were the most progressive Government on the environment in my lifetime). With elections in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, and 2008, along with one Federal by-election (that I can recall voting in) and 4 Provincial Elections (I didn’t vote in 2001 as I was living in the States), that is 11 chances, and I have never taken the Orange pill.
Part of the reason for this is that I was raised in a Big C Conservative household. My Dad, especially, was never too comfortable with the “Progressive” tag in the PC name, and proudly lined up to vote for Robert Stanfield against Trudeau three times. The ironic part of this is that every time I suggest perhaps Stephen Harper is not the best thing ever to happen to Canada, my Father’s reflex false dichotomy argument is to accuse me of “loving Jack”. So telling my Dad, in his 70th year, that I voted for Jack is going to hurt. This picture will no doubt disappoint:
Sorry Dad. I guess the Canucks playoff beard doesn’t help, eh? 
Another reason is that the last Party of which I was a member was the Green Party of Canada. I joined after meeting Marshall Smith, who ran for New Westminster-Coquitlam, and have helped Rebecca Helps in the subsequent by-election. My membership is now lapsed (which hasn’t stopped the relentless flow of spam), although I still think the Greens may have the best platform on balance. There is a lot more there that I agree with than things I don’t (although there is still much of the latter). This election, however, the Greens have decided to put all of their effort into one and a half ridings, and have essentially abandoned the idea of being a national party. I also have concerns that the “Green” brand has taken that party as far as it is going to go, and they have to do some serious soul-searching about how they plan to break past the 7% ceiling they have hit. Locally, Rebecca was a great candidate during the by-election, and has her heart in the right place, but has herself moved on to Victoria to work for the Provincial Greens, and has had a pretty lacklustre campaign locally.
That said, the biggest challenge the New Westminster-Coquitlam Greens have is Fin Donnelly. The NDP have a hit-and-miss record on the environment, partly (in my uninformed opinion) because of their traditional labour support (so Union Jobs will always come before environmental stewardship), and partly because their response to Climate Change (the “Cap and Trade” method) is simply wrong. Nonetheless, Fin rises above the balance of the party on the Environment file. His unrelenting advocacy for the protection of the Fraser River and wild Pacific Salmon is approaching legend status. He is as “green” as any NDP candidate gets.
In his short 16-months as MP, he has demonstrated an exceptional work ethic. For a new MP in a third-place party, his record is substantial: he has brought 6 private members bills forward, two on environmental issues, and has worked across parties to advance these initiatives. He has held town hall meetings here at home to connect his constituents to Ottawa. He is the only local senior-government politician who is impolite enough to mention that Evergreen has not really been built yet.
I can personally vouch for his constituent support. A couple of friends and I were working on a difficult local environment issue, and were able to arrange a meeting with Fin to discuss the issue. He took the time to listen to our concerns, gave us some insight into the politics of the issue, and provided some really useful suggestions. He also took the time to provide useful insight into the UBE issue that has a Federal component (as that is where some of the money comes from). He has worked in Ottawa, and he has worked in the community. That is what I want from an MP.

So today I decided to attend the Jack Layton rally in Burnaby. Notably, I am not and NDP member, nor have I ever supported the NDP, but I had not problem joining the crowd at this rally (hear that Stephen?). And it was as pumped up a crowd as I have seen since I saw the Tragically Hip play at the House of Blues in Vegas. Following the tried-and-true campaign tactic of ordering a room about 10% too small for the crowd you anticipate, the NDP missed the goal here, as there were more people outside rallying than there were inside. It was so packed inside that even Adrian Dix couldn’t get a front-row seat. Jack was on message, and full of energy, and made sure to point out, in English and in French, that the Quebec breakthrough makes this an election like no other.

Jack was so full of energy, I would have needed a faster camaera to catch him…
The Rally was so crowded, even those who should have had some pull
seemed to have a hard time getting close to the stage.
So I guess I am on the Orange Wave. The polls, if they are to be trusted, are suggesting that the NDP may beat the Liberals. I’m not sure the popular vote surge is going to result in enough seats to make Jack Prime Minister in our first-past-the-post system, but predictions are not worth much this year. Monday Night’s Vote Party will be fun, and it will be a nail biter.

Meeting Candidates

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Notice, this is one of those few posts I will do where I am essentially writing as President of the New Westminster Environmental Partners. I have not passed this by the membership, so the opinions expressed below are not necessarily those of the NWEP, but the event I am talking about is clearly an NWEP-led initiative. So: Facts theirs, opinions mine. Capice?

Last week, the New Westminster Environmental Partners did what they do best: partnered with other groups to bring people together and get them talking about solutions to problems. The only thing different this week was the people who got together: Members of Parliament and people seeking to become members of Parliament.

Partnering with NEXT New West (a group so secretive, they have meetings in public places every month, and commonly post video of them on YouTube), and Tenth to the Fraser (you know who they are…), we held a unique all-candidates event.

Now, the NWEP do not, as a general rule, shout and protest. More commonly, we try to educate ourselves about sustainability topics, seek to inform the public about issues, and engage the decision makers to try to find common interest towards positive outcomes. Most of the time, we find conversation much more productive if neither side is shouting. There may be a time and an issue that calls for protest, but in a community like New Westminster you can usually bend the ear of the people you need to reach without the need to yell.

With this in mind, we wanted to hold an event for the Federal Election, as we have organized traditional debate-style “all candidates meetings” in previous elections. But just another debate-style meeting, where candidates read the party script to an audience of already-decided people, with microphones and media all waiting for the gotcha-moment, that doesn’t seem like engaging conversation anymore. Maybe all we need to do is bring the local candidates into a room and let them have normal conversations with each other and their constituents.

It just so happens NWEP had a format in our back pocket: Green Drinks. Once a month for the last few years, NWEP types and others interested in environment and sustainability issues have gathered on the first Wednesday of the month to socialize and network for a few hours. No themes, no speeches, just a chance to get together and share ideas. We didn’t invent the idea: Green Drinks have happened for years around the world.

Of course “Green Drinks” is a pretty loaded idea, and although the environmental focus is an attractive idea to some parties, it may not appeal to a few others (remaining non-partisan, I’ll let you fill those categories yourself). So we asked NEXT – a group comprised of young business leaders and entrepreneurs in New Westminster, if they wanted to meet the candidates and they agreed it was a good idea. We hoped this would broaden the appeal somewhat. The good folks at Tenth to the Fraser also piped in to offer logistical and advertising support, and we now had everything…except a date or a location.

The original Green Drinks time and place did not work out for a variety of reasons, mostly conflicting schedules, and not enough lead time to get any Candidates. Long story short, Robert Tang from LaRustica stepped up and offered to host us in the Roma Room. We had little certainty to offer him: we didn’t know how many people would show up, nor did we know how much people would buy… so it must have been a challenge for him to organize staffing… but he was accommodating and in the end it worked out.

Of course, timing was also important: we had to compete with the all-candidates meetings being scheduled in other locations in both ridings (notably, none in New Westminster), with the Easter Long Weekend, with the short election cycle, and with Canucks Playoff games. Once a likely date was found, we sent invitations to all 8 candidates in the “main” parties for the two New West ridings, and were frankly shocked when 7 of the 8 agreed to show up.

To keep this from being just another debate, we decided to give each candidate a few minutes on a soap box to introduce themselves. Briana from Tenth to the Fraser took video of each speech (and mercifully avoided showing my ham-fisted announcements), so you can see they were short and the crowd was (for the most part) receptive. But outside of the 15 minutes or so of “soap box time” the rest of the evening was lively, with lots of conversation. The crowd was smaller than I expected, but we mostly filled the room, and there was unprecedented access to the candidates for those who did show up.

It was great to see such a mixed crowd: along with the usual NWEP rabble rousers, there was a popular former coffee-shop owner, to a local trucker well known for being politically outspoken, several young local proprietors, a young local realtor, a City councillor, and a well-known Quayside president, along with several people I met for the first time. Since there was little time wasted on speeches, I got to bend Diana Dilworth’s ear about the Fraser Basin Council, talk to Ken Beck Lee about his work on scrutinizing international GHG auditors, and chat with Paul Forseth about a common friend (a former Reform MP from my home town) and the adventure of flying into Castlegar airport. It was great to be able to chat with these “candidates” as people. Of course, I also discussed my vision of environmental responsibility with a couple of candidates, asked some questions about their vision, and made sure they knew what topics I thought were important this election.

I think it was a good event. The candidates seemed happy, and the crowd there had great access to the candidates. I think this is a model the NWEP will return to in future elections, now that we know it actually works. If nothing else, I now know who I am going to vote for, and feel good about the person I am giving my vote to.

In contrast, I attended the “traditional” all-candidates meeting put on the Burquitlam Community Association at Banting Middle School the following evening. This was very well attended, there were several hundred people, and there were 5 candidates there from the New Westminster-Coquitlam riding. And quite honestly, it was painful. In an echo-laden gym, the candidates sat behind a table with their policy books in front of them, and answered vapid or loaded questions as close to the party line as possible, with the same group of family and supporters cheering or jeering on cue. 

There were a few interesting moments (some NDP supporter asked Diana Dilworth about abortion, Fin Donnelly asked who we were going to attack with our F-35 Attack planes), but for the most part, the responses were dull, and varied little from the rhetoric of campaign-speak. When a question about voter apathy came up about an hour in, we had to leave for fear of narcolepsy.

With all required modesty, I think the NWEP/NEXT/TttF did it better.

UBE – Phase 2 consultation, and the skill of listening.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

Again, there is so much going on right now that I am slow to Blog about it all. This week’s event included the TransLink workshop on Wednesday night – The beginning of Phase 2 of their revamped consultation process for the proposed United Boulevard Extension.

The turn out was pretty good, and it looks like about the numbers TransLink (or their facilitator) anticipated. They had 8 tables set up, and there were about 10 people per table, with a lot of TransLink and City staff milling about as observers (just to be clear- this was a TransLink-run show, and I didn’t hear City Staff or elected folks advocate for anything other than having the conversation. Well, except for when Councillor Harper very astutely asked no-one to talk about the Hockey Game, as many in the crowd were likely recording it).

The evening started out with a presentation from the facilitator, with input from the design consultants from Delcan. The presentation is available here.

They opened up by making it clear that none of these concepts would be compared to the “unspoken option”: doing nothing. TransLink wants to build this project, so they are going to try to come up with a satisfactory project. If none of the concepts they come up with are ultimately satisfactory to the City, then TransLink will take their ball and go home. But none of these projects will be compared to “no project”, they will only be compared to each other. I suppose this leaves the “no project” open for discussion in the community once they have honed down the TransLink options to one. And that might be an interesting topic. (Is anyone thinking about what would happen if TransLink walked away and the Ministry of Transportation and Highways takes over this project? You think they will be interested in community consultation?).

They then outlined the Objectives of the project, which can also be read into by the cynic:
1:Improve safety and reliability of people and goods movement (they have slipped “people” in there, as an admission that it will be a commuting short cut, not just a truck route. I would suggest removing all traffic would make it reliable and safe, but I think they are going the other direction); 2: Reduce Excessive GHGs caused by idling (again, hedging their bets, they are not reducing GHGs, only the excessive ones caused by idling. More vehicles will undoubtedly resulti n more GHGs overall); 3: Support Alternative Modes (Great, I like this one, although this seems a little more like tolerating alternative modes than building with them in mind); 4: Removal of at-grade crossing at Braid Street ($170 million will buy you a lot of Jersey Barriers); and 5: Meets Partner’s Objectives (which are less well defined, but making New West Council happy is definitely under this category).

After this they rolled out 5 basic concepts that came out of the earlier consultation meetings. There is no doubt there is a bit of a sales job going on. That isn’t a criticism; part of the facilitator’s job is to sell the merits of the project on the audience. Walking into a potentially hostile crowd like this, some sales savvy is needed just to get the conversation going. One common sales technique they used is to make us own the project. They kept reinforcing that “these plans are your plans, made by the community during phase 1 consultation, not our plans”. This gives the audience a sense of ownership – we are likely to be less critical of our own ideas than someone else’s… this is why an shrewd salesman has you list your desires before giving them back to you, often adjusted to fit the product he has in front of him.

So let us review:

Concept A – Click to grow

?
Concept A had a new road paralleling Brunette on the other side of the tracks, then somehow connecting to Columbia further west, or even to Front Street directly. This plan is basically dead in the water. It would nuke an unacceptable amount of New West industrial land; it would no doubt trigger an Federal or Provincial Environmental Assessment process that TransLink does not have the time, money, or community support to go through; it just moves the overpass to another neighbourhood (and would need a bigger overpass), would end any plans to develop our waterfront east of the bridges for park or industrial use, and it would be prohibitively expensive. Really, this plan was not further reviewed, for good reason.

Concept B – Click to grow

Concept B is little more than the previous overpass plan of 2010, warmed over a bit. It lacked detail on how lanes would be distributed, but it connects United Boulevard directly to Brunette over the Sky Train Dip, and reduces Brunette to a lesser road (or even dead-ends Brunette at the overpass). Although this was one of the Concepts discussed at length, it seems no more satisfactory than the original plan: we are still talking a 15-foot high overpass with trucks on it, so the liveability impacts on Sapperton are still there. It also presents some problems for transit connectivity to Braid Station. Finally, it seems to direct all of the trucks moving along Brunette to United, when most of them are trying to get to Highway 1. This is about a polished as the original UBE concept could be, but all the polish in TransLink’s arsenal isn’t enough to make this anything but a turd.

Concept C – Click to grow

Concept C might be the best for New West, but was not considered further as it did not hit TransLink’s objectives (very little support for this bold assertion was made, it just didn’t meet their objectives, end of story). This concept was to simply close the rail crossing (those Jersey barriers I mentioned) and replace the Bailey with a bigger bridge. This would allow the industrial traffic to access Highways 1 and 7 via the Bailey Bridge and the new King Edward Overpass (the City could get involved in improving the Spruce Street situation to better serve their industrial customers, but we can talk about that later), it will effectively stop rat-runners through the industrial area, will make the rail crossing safe, will make the Bailey Bridge friendly for peds and bikes, will be cheap to build… but I guess Coquitlam would take New West to court of this was suggested.

Concept D – Click to grow

Concept D involved numerous bowl-of-spaghetti options for an interchange connecting United to a re-vamped Brunette interchange. Don’t let the petroglyph-turtle design wow you too much, this is a really costly and impractical option and would require significant contributions from MoT (who are already a little over committed these days) and building over a big hunk of railyard that ain’t going anywhere for anyone. For all sorts of reasons, this concept is also dead in the water.

Concept E – Click to grow

Concept “E” was the idea of connecting United Boulevard to Brunette between Highway 1 and Braid. This was, by far, the most popular option in the room ) seemed the most popular. It was even suggested that losses of New West industrial land could be reduced by running the road though the Landfill adjacent to the Golf course on the Coquitlam side of the Brunette. Coquitlam wants this damn road, why don’t they sacrifice some tax property instead of New West losing limited industrial space. The Bailey Bridge could remain, and the Braid industrial area connect to the new connector by crossing the Bailey and getting onto the existing United. Of course, this concept looked better and better the more the route is pushed towards Highway 1, raising the question: why not just put the traffic on Highway 1, put the $170 Million into busses and Evergreen, and end this painful process?

In the end, we won’t know what the real concept is until they come back on the 30th with some useful plans. The concepts shown were very high-level, and the implications for traffic planning, GHG, costs, were not there to evaluate the options. That said, there are a lot of people in the room who think this consultation process is a sham, and it was often hard at my table to have a meaningful discussion with the facilitators and the Translink staff when people are calling them liars and doubting their professional expertise. The transportation engineer at my table was very patient to the abuse hurled at her (much calmer than I would have been). It is too bad that the one loud guy at my table was constantly complaining that TransLink was not listening and their minds are already made up, when the complainer clearly had already made up his mind and was not listening.

Overall, I think the consultation process is working, but I have not yet been convinced that they have come up with a plan that suits our needs as a City (although “Option E” might be getting close). Mark me as “cautiously optimistic”, but that is pretty much my nominal status…

What was strangely missing was any acknowledgement of the requirements the City Council made for this project: a realistic plan to manage the traffic west of the UBE in such a way that we are not just moving the pinch point closer to downtown New Westminster. All this talk of “community concerns” is kind of empty without addressing the one Concern that New Westminster Council has repeatedly raised: what about Front Street?

As an aside, you want to talk about community? There were 100+ people in the room, several of whom were watching Game 1 on their portable devices, or at least checking in on the score. At not time did anyone cheer or boo, and at not time did anyone announce the score, recognizing that many of the crowd recorded the game. The rest rushed home to catch the third, and were rewarded for their efforts.

Back to the Blob… ugh

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

There is an ongoing dialogue about the Pier Park going on in the comments section of the News Leader. I have hit this topic several times, have blogged about this topic before, and have actually met Chris Bell to discuss his concerns. But since I opened my fat gob once again to comment online on some comments I see as scare-mongering in Mr. Bell’s letter to the leader, I am now stuck here, blogging on what I see as a non-topic again, just to correct some facts on what I said, and in what Mr. Bell read into it.

The standard caveat: this project is close enough to my professional area that I should probably start by making some sort of declaration of my lack of knowledge. I cannot give a “Professional Opinion” on this topic, mostly because I am not privy to all the information. Everything I know about this project is from the public reports released through City Council and the media. So although I have significant training and experience managing contaminated sites across BC, and a pretty solid understanding of the Contaminated Sites Regulation and the Environmental Management Act, what follows is a personal opinion worth exactly what you paid for it: nothing.

I will go through Mr. Bell’s last comment to me, topic by topic.

“Patrick, you argue that the city showed due diligence before they purchased the pier land.”

The term “due diligence” does not mean you do everything humanly possible to find all available information about a piece of land. The “Due” part means that you do everything that should be reasonably expected to be done, that the effort and resources used coincide with what would typically be done in the industry.

When taking milk out of the fridge, good “due diligence” before handing it to your child to drink would be to check the expiry date, or maybe sniff the open bottle to see if it is rank, and to inspect for signs of curdle as you pour it in the glass. Running a mass spectroscopy analysis or doing an LD50 test on rabbits would probably provide ever further reassurance that the milk was not rotten or tainted with botulism, and is safe to drink, but that would be costly and time consuming, and would exceed “due diligence”.

In a real estate purchase, what is too costly or too time consuming? There is no upper limit to the amount of time and money you could spend investigating a site. You can drill holes and install monitoring wells across every meter of the ground, and still miss a 90cm-across block of uranium. A good rule of thumb for costing out these exercises is that every single monitoring well you install, including drilling costs, sampling, analytical costs for soil and groundwater samples, and all the accessory costs of doing the investigation, costs $5,000. Sometimes you can drill 10 for $30,000, sometimes only 5 cost you $50,000. But $5,000 per hole is a good order-of magnitude back-of-the-envelope guess for investigation costs. So what constitutes “due diligence” at $5,000 a hole?

In reality, we don’t in the industry machine-gun a site with $5000 holes, as potentially profitable as that would be for consultants. Instead, we look at the site history and make some educated guesses about the likelihood of contamination in certain areas, and dedicate our resources to those areas. Prior to the purchase in 2009, the City’s consultant took existing reports on the site (back to 2005), and used those as a basis for further investigation. This launched what is called a Supplementary Phase 2 investigation. They probably could have relied on those existing reports, but instead, they did a little extra diligence and went back to the previously identified “hot spots” and installed more monitoring wells. This, in my personal opinion, represents a level of due diligence consummate with the purchase of former industrial land that would become a park. I might have saved some money and dug some test pits instead of so much drilling, and relied on the existing wells more, but I’m a cheap bastard. I work for government.

Again, in my personal opinion as a taxpayer in New Westminster, this report demonstrates due diligence was performed on the environmental risk prior to the purchase. The City knew, as best as they could with reasonable efforts, what was there, and could make an informed decision about the purchase. You can disagree about the decision they made, that is your right as a voter, but you cannot say they did not exercise due diligence.

“The City has stated that the land purchase cost was reduced by the expected costs of remediation ”about 1.5 million dollars” and yet they ignored their own experts observations that vapour and off-site investigation of the lands to the north of the park must occur before the investigations could be considered complete.”

Let’s look at what the Supplemental Phase 2 report said. They confirmed the soil metals contamination previously identified on site, and that there was no groundwater metals problem. They identified some PAHs that exceeded standards in groundwater. PAH is a catch-all term for a group of petroleum hydrocarbon substances that contain benzene rings (hence the “aromatic” in Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons). These are generally trace constituents or break-down products of oils or fuels, and are common in gas station-type contaminated sites. They are all LNAPLs, so they tend to float on top of (or concentrate towards the top of if dissolved) water. Again, no surprises here, they know they were there from the earlier reports, they were just confirming their concentrations and how things may have changed since the previous reporting time. These substances are also regulated as vapours, but assuming their remediation plan was scooping them up and trucking them away, there was no need to worry too much about the vapour concentrations: if you remove the PAHs, the vapours also go away.

Finally, they confirmed the presence of some DNAPL compounds: the dreaded “Toxic Blob” of Chris Bell’s nightmares. They found them because they knew they were there from the earlier reports. The news here looks good, though. The sampling indicated they were much lower concentration that the previous (2005) sampling, and in fact, they did not exceed the allowable standards. The concentrations were so low, that they did not constitute “contamination”.

The report did indeed say that new (in 2009) Ministry standards would mean that vapours would need to be investigated. However it was not noted as a flaw or a gap in the report, as Mr. Bell suggests, but as a heads-up. The consultant is saying “you had better plan to manage these vapours when you are planning to manage your soil and groundwater”. Removing the PAHs physically would constitute managing the vapours as I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. As far as the DNAPL solvents, the concentrations are so low in this report, that it is extremely unlikely that vapours will exceed any standards, But they still have to sample them by the regulations. Take a few samples, find acceptable concentrations, apply for a CofC, Bob’s your uncle. I suspect the main reason they threw that warning was that vapour sampling was new at the time, and is both expensive and was technically challenging in 2009 when the new standards had just been adopted (and there was little technical guidance from Ministry), so they had better budget time and money for collecting the samples. There is no suggestion from this report that active remediation or risk management on those DNAPLs would be required. The data just didn’t suggest that.

No-where does that report state that offsite investigation would be required or recommended. Here Mr. Bell is completely wrong. To do intrusive investigations like drilling and digging holes on a site you don’t own, but are considering buying, is a difficult enough legal process to go through (who owns the data? What are the rights and responsibilities of the parties in relation to the data? Who has liability for accidents or property damage? Who has responsibility for the monitoring wells if you decide not to buy?) But to try to secure access to a third-party piece of adjacent land, in which you have no commercial interest, only to prove they might be damaging a piece of land you do not own? That is a ridiculous request, unlikely to be agreed to by the best of neighbours (as they can only lose by allowing it), and I am afraid the Railways are not always the best of neighbours. Any attempt to collect data without their permission would constitute criminal trespass.

“It is the cost of these investigations that added another two to three million dollars to the remediation costs. ”

I don’t know where Mr. Bell’s numbers are coming from, so I cannot comment on them. The “investigations” certainly did not cost millions of dollars, but probably several hundred thousand. Apparently (based on Jim Lowrie’s recent comments) the overall remediation budget has gone over $2 million, and I imagine (but cannot confirm, as I do not have the information) that the engineering, hydrogeology and installation of the bentonite/concrete barrier wall is the majority of that cost. Considering that they had a $1.5 Million reduction on the purchase price because of the environmental concerns, it sounds like they are $500,000 down overall (within contingency according to Lowrie).

But let’s be clear, the DNAPL presence was known, it was investigated, and in 2005 and 2009 the best evidence was that the DNAPL was at a concentration that did not constitute “contamination”, and at the time, the idea that they would need to install a barrier wall was simply not on the table. Something changed in the nature of the contamination between 2009 and 2010, and along with this the standards and requirements for remediation changed. It is safe to say that those changes could not reasonably have been anticipated in 2009 when the due diligence was performed.

“How did ignoring the requirements for off-site and vapour testing show due diligence?”

Already discussed. There were no requirements ignored.

“ The environmental cleanup is over budget… by millions. The City advertised, “…a worst case scenario, all in cost of 1.5 million dollars on environmental cleanup” Millions not spent on cleanup could have been used to build more park infrastructure. “

No, the environmental cleanup is within the contingency budget. Remember, that $1.5 Million is the cost reduction that the City got on the purchase based on the known contamination. If the City did not have to spend that money on clean-up, they would have had to pay that much extra for the land purchase. Because the City did due diligence, it got that reduction in the purchase cost which covered most of the cost for remediation.

It’s your declaration Patrick that, “To make the more strident claim that the City is risking the health and well being of its Citizens and is somehow in cahoots with the Province to expose children and joggers to dangerous chemicals is absurd scare mongering.”
I’ll leave the attack on my character alone…”

And I stand by the statement that claims that the City is risking people’s health in their management of the chlorinated solvents are not only false, they represent fear-mongering. This is not a character attack, it is my assessment of the facts on the ground.

“… and stick to the known threats from the chlorinated solvents along the city owned land along the northern border of the park site. City reports to the Ministry Of Environment state the railway corridor soils are High Risk for chlorinated solvents.”

Here is where Mr. Bell is simply confusing his terms. There is an area of the park designated “High Risk”. That term is very strictly defined by the Ministry of Environment, and there are strict protocols about how it is used and what it means. The money quote from that protocol is this: “If mobile NAPL is present at a site, the site is considered a high risk site.”

The presence of mobile DNAPL at the pier park is what makes the site “High Risk”. Because it is “High Risk”, the City is under more strict reporting guidelines with the Ministry, and the Ministry will ultimately have final sign-off on the cleanup. This is the highest level of Provincial oversight one could hope for.

“People walk/run this corridor as a pathway across New Westminster thus exposing themselves to the toxic soils. “

This is simply untrue. “High Risk” in this case does not mean is that there is any immediate danger to anyone or to anything. It does not mean that the soils are emitting toxic fumes into the air, it does not mean that people are being harmed by the DNAPL.

In risk assessment, the term “pathway” refers to any route through which a contaminant can get to a receptor, be that a person or the environment. Hydrocarbon vapours coming off of soil and being breathed by joggers is a “pathway”. Arsenic in soil getting on your fingers then onto your lunch is a “pathway”. PCBs leaching through the ground and into grass, then being eaten by a cow is a “pathway”. For there to be any threat to a person, there has to be an “open pathway” from the contamination to the person. In the case of the Pier Park, there is no evidence that there is an open pathway. DNAPL dissolved in water 40 feet below the ground simply cannot get into the system of a jogger on the tracks. There is no pathway.

The “risk” here is not a threat to human health, it is the uncertainty related to mobility of the contaminants. Therefore there is now a positive onus on the City to stop that migration and keep track of the contamination, so that they and the Ministry will know if there is ever an “open pathway”, and an actual threat posed by this stuff.

DNAPL 40 feet down will never be a threat to humans, unless they sink a drinking water well at the park (an unlikely scenario). If allowed to migrate, it is possible the contamination will migrate to the bottom of the river (well away from the shore) and impact marine invertebrates, potentially causing a “dead zone” in the river, but unlikely to be harmful to even salmon, as these DNAPLs will be pretty diluted by the river and are not bio-accumulators. I’m not saying this would happen, I’m just trying to imagine a scenario where these things can cause harm to anything.

“The City is stating it has no plans to remediate the toxic railway corridor nor will it put up signs warning the public away from the High Risk contaminated lands. Are these non-actions not risking the health and well being of New Westminster citizens?”

Correct, these non-actions are not risking the health and well-being of New Westminster residents. See above.

The City not only has no responsibility to clean up the Railway lands, I suspect they would not legally be able to. It isn’t their land. Unless it could be demonstrated that the contamination migrated from City land to the railway land, then the Ministry might compel the City to clean up the Railway land, but it would be extremely unusual for the Ministry to do this when there is no human health risk. More likely, the railway would clean up its own land and take the City to court to make them pay for it. Which is exactly what I think the City should do to the railways.

“How you came to the conclusion that I think lowly of the Ministry Of Environment is truly puzzling to me. I praise the Lord for the MOE’S involvement and look forward to their scrutiny of the City’s cleanup efforts if, and when, the City ever sends the required documents to Victoria for review. Why did you state that I have a pitiful view of the MOE when the complete opposite is true?”

Chris, I suspect you misinterpreted my comments, or I gave you a false impression though bad wordsmithing. You stated clearly that you have more faith in MoE than you do the City, and I previously stated that you should therefore feel better about the High Risk determination, as that will result in a higher level of scrutiny from the Ministry.

“I agree with you, Patrick, that the current Mayor and council have invested a lot of political capital on this Pier Park and the Realpolitik negotiations (between the need for complete environmental investigation/remediation and opening the park before the November elections) must be brutal. “

Again, I am not privy to the negotiations going on, but they are going to have to hustle their asses to get a CofC from the Province before November. They may be able to get a release letter that limits how they use the Park and sets strict conditions on the management of soils on the park prior to getting a CofC, the Ministry is starting to get pretty proactive with those. That would essentially allow them to open and use the park without a CofC. But again, I don’t know much about their strategy with managing the site, and the High Risk designation may make that a non-starter.

“The City’s environmental management of the Westminster Pier Park Brownfield has been neither consistent, nor transparent, nor responsible. “

I have seen literally hundreds of these types of projects. In my experience, the City has been consistent and responsible, and have frankly been much more transparent about the process than any corporate client I ever had, and at least as transparent as any government client I ever had. Frankly, I was a little shocked about how much info on this site I could get with few hours on Google. Try that with a Port Metro Vancouver or Kinder Morgan contaminated site…. I do not share Mr. Bell’s criticism here.

“Thankfully, it will be up to the highly skilled Ministry of Environment to decide when the environmental investigations/cleanup are complete although I pray that political deadlines do not trump an in-depth remediation process.”

I’m not a praying type, but I have faith in the professionals doing the work.

Election Day 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As you can read here, I am not a member of any political party, and my votes in the past have gone to candidates from all over the political spectrum. I am political, but pretty non-partisan. Good ideas can come from anyone, just as bad ideas can.

But I am not without biases. I really don’t like Harper’s Conservatives, for several reasons. A good recent example arrived in my electronic mailbox on Thursday.

I am on an Environment Canada mail list for both work and personal interest reasons, mostly because I like to know what my “open and accountable” government is up to. So when this notice arrived in my mailbox (and mailboxes across Canada) at 12:25 PDT on Thursday, I was naturally excited. Apparently the Government was finally going to do something about the damning report they themselves commissioned, then tried to bury, only releasing it a couple of days before Christmas, when everyone is paying attention. I was looking forward to calling in for the announcement, until I realized the actual announcement was in less than 20 minutes, and I would have to “pre-register” by calling the handy number they provided. So they are giving a press conference to no-one, at 3:45 EDT, the day before the Government Falls. Why do I think this is not going to be good news? Open and accountable government? those bastards. Ends up they came up with a “plan” to start monitoring the Tar Sands impacts on the Assiniboine River. No actual timing is mentioned, no actual funding is suggested. Really, there is no evidence they plan to actually do anything, but they have a plan. To start monitoring. Some time. Later. Maybe.

Apparently, I am supposed to vote Liberal, but tomorrow I will be out pounding signs into lawns for a friend representing another party. Not that it matters in this riding, as someone representing yet a third party is the foregone winner. Dilworth’s pre-recorded voice already called me today, and she gave me the canned Party Line. The message offered to hear my questions of I pressed 1, which I dutifully did. They hung up on me. but a pre-recorded message that lies about allowing you to interact: that is pretty much the Conservative Party Line, isn’t it?

So I can sit back and enjoy the election with a slight detachment. 24 hours in to the election, and Ignatieff has already made a strategic blunder.

This coalition thing is a smokescreen, it is just more of the Politics of Fear that Steve learned from his Southern Friends. As long as they are trying to paint a coalition as the Worst Possible Thing That Could Happen™, none of the real issues are going to come to the forefront.

So to deny that a coalition is up for consideration serves three purposes: It reinforces the false notion that it is the Worst Possible Thing That Could Happen™; it limits his options if the polls don’t start improving soon; and it lets Harper control the conversation.

The only appropriate response to this type of bullshit is to turn it around on him. Say something like:

“I am campaigning for a Liberal Majority Government, because I think that would be the best result for all Canadians. That said, Mr. Harper is going to have to explain to Canada why a stable coalition of willing Parliamentarians, working together to represent the interests of the majority of Canadians is somehow “less stable” than yet another fragile minority government, unwilling to work with anyone or hear any diversity of voices, desperate enough to hold on to the reigns of power that they would rather prorogue Parliament that listen to the will of the people.”

Boom.