The following letter was sent to the SCRD board and copied to Coast Reporter.
We write with grave concern for what must be seen as a dangerously superficial treatment of safety considerations in the new proposed area B official community plan (OCP), relative to the existing OCP concerning the Redrooffs Escarpment area.
We request that the SCRD board shelve the draft bylaw until these considerations are addressed at least as comprehensively as in the existing OCP.
As drafted the bylaw substantially increases the risk of liability to regional district taxpayers.
A major concern of ours is the slope hazard along the Redrooffs Escarpment.
We live on the upper side of Redrooffs Road near Southwood. The property across the road from ours has had numerous landslide issues, including one related fatality in the 1980's when the late owner imagined a road down to the beach on which he overturned his jeep. The home he had built down there is now buried in mud. There have been numerous costly road problems and house slides on the oceanside of Redrooffs. Undoubtedly these and geotechnical evaluations are what prompted the severe constraints on development in this area prescribed by the existing OCP. The needfulness for severe constraints has been alarmingly loosened in the proposed Bylaw 675.
Make no mistake this is an unstable escarpment, yet the word "escarpment" appears only two times in the proposed new bylaw. In the existing plan, the word "escarpment" appears 15 times. Indeed, two whole sections warn of the hazards in development permit area 3.
Please shelve the proposed bylaw and keep the existing plan. The slope hazards along the Redrooffs Escarpment are far more wisely considered in the existing plan. This alone places the existing plan in a far superior position than the proposed new draft.
Roger Lagassé
Halfmoon Bay
