A simmering crowd of nearly 100 Keats Island residents, property owners and their friends gathered Saturday afternoon, April 3, by a contentious stone revetment at the foot of a property on Maple Beach in the island's Eastbourne community.
Islands Trust trustee Jan Hagedorn said the Trust, which governs land use on Keats Island, is concerned about the structure which is designed to prevent erosion and looks like a low-lying barrier of stacked stones.
"The bylaw officer came out and found that the seawall was in perceived violation of the Keats Island land use bylaw," she said. "You can't put a structure in the [7.5m] setback."
Attendee Monica Woodley, who has property just around the corner, said she was concerned the necessary permissions weren't in place for the structure to be built.
"My daughter was literally christened on this beach when she was born," she said. "So it's really disturbing and it's really upsetting that something like this can happen."
But as various crowd members voiced concerns about whether the necessary permissions are in place for the revetment and whether it might be trespassing on Crown foreshore, Ken Pedersen, owner of the property in question, countered that the structure was indeed built on his property and that he and his wife Joan have been seeking and obtaining a slew of permissions for the project for the past 11 years.
"We're just ordinary people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we've done the right thing," he said.
Pedersen said after they purchased the property in 1998, a major storm in 1999 caused erosion on the property. Launching into a process to protect their property against further erosion, he said, they complied with the Islands Trust bylaw that was in force at the time, which stipulated that they could build in the 7.5m setback from the shore if they obtained permission from the Minister of Water Resources permission which they have obtained.
Following that, he said, they proceeded to pursue a series of further permissions, including authorization indicating that no evidence of First Nations artifacts had been found on the project site; a project design directed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada; and a Canadian Environmental Ass-essment process, which was eventually tossed out when it was determined to be unwarranted.
By the end of the process, which he said has involved 15 different government and other agencies, Islands Trust had changed and added bylaws, throwing the Pedersens' revetment project into non-compliance and requiring them to apply for a development variance permit.
But Pedersen contends that given the extensive delays of government, a local bylaw-changing process which he said didn't involve sufficient consultation and tensions in the community that he feels have skewed the public process against him, the revetment should be assessed under the original bylaw that was in force when he launched the process.
Nicholas Simons, MLA for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, attended the meeting and promised the crowd he would see the situation through to a fair resolution.
"Right now what we have is this structure that has had an impact on many people's quality of life," he said. "Their previous use of the beach is not currently being enjoyed. And because of that, I've been pursuing it with the appropriate authorities just so that it's not just swept away."
