Residents of Sechelt’s Seawatch neighbourhood are hoping Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons can bring the sinkhole situation that’s plagued the area since 2012 to the attention of the provincial government.
One family has been forced from their home and a second home sits empty because the District of Sechelt will not issue an occupancy permit. A new sinkhole appeared on a vacant lot Sept. 19.
Simons said he passed on the residents’ concerns, and their call for a public inquiry, to Mike Farnworth, the Minister for Public Safety and Solicitor General.
“It’s not a unique situation, although obviously the details are specific to that area and that problem, but I think the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General is looking at the information I’ve given them and I hope they can give me some direction as to what to suggest,” Simons said.
Simons also spoke out for the Seawatch residents in late 2017, when he wrote to Sechelt council on their behalf.
The district’s engineering consultants, Thurber, issued a report earlier this month on the sinkhole that appeared Sept. 19. The report notes that there was heavy rainfall in the two weeks before the sinkhole was spotted and says the new sinkhole is “symptomatic of the ongoing deterioration of subsurface conditions in this area and demonstrates that the sinkhole hazard is increasing with time and is not confined to locations where sinkholes have occurred previously.”
Thurber also repeats the recommendation made in a 2017 report that called for “immediate, proactive, groundwater management” and goes on to warn “the site will experience another sinkhole collapse in the near term,” which could cause damage to public infrastructure and private property and “injury or even death.”
The new sinkhole appeared just as the municipal campaign was ramping up, and Seawatch property owners worked to make it an election issue.
“As an individual, I’d love to go in and fix it now,” said mayor-elect Darnelda Siegers at a Sept. 27 candidate forum. “As a member on council, I’m representing 10,000 people in the community… Our insurance company is the one who dictates to us, in a lot of cases, what we can and cannot do. If we were to not follow the guidelines of our insurance company, then they would walk away and you the residents would be responsible for remediation in that area.”
Siegers said she felt it was time for the district to sit down with their insurance company, the Municipal Insurance Association of B.C., and “get this to a resolution.”
