The Gibsons Alliance of Business and Community (GABC) is gearing up for more legal action against the Town of Gibsons over the George Hotel and Residences Project.
GABC marked the Thanksgiving weekend with a “rally to protect Gibsons aquifer” at Dougall Park Oct. 7. The day-long event featured music, food and efforts by GABC to get its message out and raise money to help with legal costs. Speakers included former Gibsons mayor Barry Janyk, former councillor LeeAnn Johnson and GABC president Suzanne Senger.
Development permits covering geotechnical hazards and aquifer protection were approved by engineering and planning staff in August, after the last permit requiring a council vote, for environmentally sensitive areas, was approved on July 31. Those decisions open the way for site remediation work and construction of the George to begin in the coming months.
Senger said GABC believes it has a solid case that the project puts the environment – especially the aquifer – at risk, and the Town has been premature in issuing those permits.
The July 31 council vote is being challenged in court by Gibsons resident Marcia Timbres, the petitioner in previous court actions along with GABC. There’s also an active Environmental Appeal Board (EAB) case.
The challenge to the July 31 council decision hinges, in part, on whether a letter of support from the ministry should have been treated as formal approval of the developer’s plan for dealing with contamination from earlier industrial activity.
The Town recently filed a response that claims it acted properly and that Timbres’ court action contradicts what GABC has said to the EAB.
“It is an abuse of process for [Timbres] to plead in this petition that section 557(2) has not been satisfied when taking the contradictory position before the Environmental Appeal Board,” the Town’s response says.
Senger said GABC expected to file a court petition this week seeking a review of the Town’s decision to issue the other development permits, as well as the building permits.
GABC is also planning for more legal action, which Senger said could include applying for an injunction to halt any work at the site if the developer goes ahead based on those permits before the other cases are heard.
Senger said the legal costs for GABC and its allies are “in the tens of thousands.”
“Clearly it’s harder for a local grassroots community group to raise funds to defend the water supply against the government that’s supposed to defend it on our behalf. It’s really unfortunate that the Town of Gibsons is wasting taxpayers’ money to fight us to do what it should be doing itself,” she said. “We are really hoping that people will step forward now and support the work that we are doing, because we have a winnable legal case.”
The group has also been getting funding support from West Coast Environmental Law.
Mayor Wayne Rowe and Town officials have been speaking publicly about the costs to the Town of the legal challenges against the George project.
The Town made headlines with a press release announcing the dismissal of a Human Rights Tribunal complaint tied to the project when it claimed the cost of dealing with that case alone came to more than $80,000.
The person who filed the Tribunal complaint, Gibsons resident Dorothy Riddle, has now gone to the B.C. Supreme Court asking that the Tribunal’s dismissal be set aside because of “procedural unfairness” and that her claim be allowed to go forward.
The Environmental Appeal Board has not yet set a date to hear the GABC’s case because the board is still going over submissions from the two sides on whether it has jurisdiction to hear an appeal in the first place.
