The province’s Environmental Assessment Office and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency have extended the deadline for public comments on the Burnco aggregate mine proposal for McNab Creek in Howe Sound. The new deadline is Oct. 3.
The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board, meanwhile, has now submitted its formal comments, but Roberts Creek director Mark Lebbell couldn’t get support for a motion saying the SCRD did not support the company’s application as presented.
Lebbell put forward the motion at the Sept. 22 corporate and administrative services committee meeting, where the SCRD’s final submission was up for discussion ahead of ratification at the board meeting later that day.
Directors agreed to make some changes to their draft submission, including adding a point that “Burnco should evaluate the impacts of climate change, and specifically sea level rise, in the post closure phase of the project and factor into the analysis the cumulative effects of periodic king tides and storm surges on the maximum of the range of high predicted sea level rise.”
Lebbell’s motion, which was intended as a stand-alone, said: “The documented ecological recovery of Howe Sound has been the result of concerted efforts to remediate the impacts of previous industrial projects, and that this fragile recovery is contributing to a renewed ecological, recreational, and commercial vitality in the area, and that the incremental, collective effects of this project pose a risk to that recovery.”
SCRD chair Garry Nohr criticized the timing of the motion, saying it should have been brought forward at least two or three months ago and not so close to the submission deadline.
Area A director Frank Mauro argued that a more appropriate tack would be to wait to see how Burnco responds to the comments that come out of the environmental assessment process.
“That site is a mess,” Mauro said. “I see this perhaps as an opportunity, with the appropriate environmental assessment and restrictions … to actually end up with an improved site there.”
West Howe Sound director Ian Winn agreed the time to talk about taking a yes or no position on the project would be after seeing the response from the company and discussing the issue with other stakeholders like the Howe Sound Community Forum.
“We had to go through the process, and respect the process, and that’s what was done. From that we now have a long list of recommendations,” Winn said.
In the end, Lebbell told the committee he was comfortable with holding off on the motion, but he also said he has yet to hear from any of his constituents who support the project.
As well as the environmental assessment, Burnco will need SCRD zoning approval for the part of the site slated for use as a processing facility.
There’s a link to the website for the Burnco application at scrd.ca
