Residents from six homes in Sechelt’s Seawatch development in West Porpoise Bay are pressing the district for a fix to sinkhole issues, claiming the municipality holds ultimate responsibility.
Mayor Bruce Milne doesn’t see it that way.
The mayor has been encouraging residents to get together and launch a class-action suit to seek resolution, suggesting it’s the most appropriate action.
Homeowner Chris Moradian said it’s “ridiculous” that Milne is encouraging them to sue, noting he and his neighbours have suffered enough without going through the courts or spending money on lawyers.
Two well-reported sinkholes have opened at the subdivision in the past three and a half years and several geotechnical reports suggest ongoing sinkhole formation can be expected in the area. The price to fix just the municipal infrastructure in the subdivision has been estimated to cost up to $10 million.
Moradian said his group believes the fix could be much cheaper, in the $1.5-million range, and that the cost could be spread out over several years to lessen the blow to the municipality.
Moradian said the group he represents sees the number one issue in sinkhole formation as being a broken storm sewer pipe in the area that has been documented by the district and is causing dirt and sediment to be pulled into the pipe along with groundwater.
“It’s a direct result of lack of maintenance and follow-up remedial work,” Moradian said.
His group places the blame squarely on the district and alleges the municipality is shirking its responsibility and instead focusing on “promoting lawsuits by the residents of Seawatch in an attempt to create a web of uncertainty in order to avoid doing these repairs.”
However, Milne said the District of Sechelt isn’t responsible for repairs.
“It’s not actually the role of government to do what they’re asking us to do,” he said.
“In this particular case, a developer came to us in 2006 or so and said that he wanted to develop this particular area. It was well known as a geologically unstable area and they looked at the engineering reports and council said, ‘Sure, you can go ahead under the recommendations of these engineering reports and you do that at your own risk.’ And there’s a covenant that was signed by the developer and is on every single one of those lots, indicating that the municipality is indemnified.”
The mayor also said fixing the storm sewer pipe wouldn’t fix the problem of sinkhole formation in the area.
“The storm water pipe is a symptom, it’s not a cause,” Milne said.
He said fixing the broken pipe is also out of the question because it’s located about 40 feet below ground between two homes that would be adversely impacted by any digging.
“The engineering complexities of digging down that deeply between those two homes without impacting both of them in terms of foundations is virtually impossible,” Milne said.
Seawatch homeowner Rod Goy said other fixes to infrastructure on site could also help the situation, pointing to a recent lining of the Crowston Road ditch that has captured “huge amounts of water” that previously appeared to be absorbed into the ground.
“That was a simple fix,” Goy said, suggesting other similar improvements could be made to reroute groundwater at a minimal cost.
Seawatch homeowners have been told the district doesn’t have any money to spend on further repairs and possible fixes on the site, Moradian said.
That bomb was dropped on them in a private meeting with the district and its lawyers just before Christmas.
“That [meeting] was just to confirm, as was clear in the 2015 budget and certainly the one we’re doing now, that the previous council had depleted reserves and had established a debt situation that left us absolutely no room to manoeuvre,” Milne told Coast Reporter.
“We have absolutely no borrowing capacity and we will probably not have any borrowing capacity of any significance until 2022.”
Milne said it was because of the district’s inability to fund a fix at Seawatch, and the municipality’s view that it’s not ultimately responsible for one, that he has encouraged residents in the area to come together in a class-action suit.
“We have encouraged them to take legal action because we think that the Municipal Insurance Association (MIA) is probably the avenue for the best resolution on this. That’s our reading of the situation. It’s obviously not shared by all of the residents. I don’t know why they don’t see that, but they don’t,” Milne said.
“It’s not going to be solved in any other way. There’s no political resolution to this at this point. It’s a financial and legal issue.”
Milne said the MIA likely wouldn’t provide funds to plaintiffs in a legal action, but that it would be the best body to organize a response.
To date four homeowners in the Seawatch subdivision have filed legal action against the district over the sinkhole saga, including Ross and Erin Storey, whose home settled into a sinkhole that opened in February 2015.
Moradian and his group still don’t see legal action as the answer and the homeowners are holding out for a formal council resolution on the issue, which is expected to be made this month.
