Editor:
I am not the mayor, but I would like to respond to Larry Belle’s letter published in the March 22 edition of your paper (“Errors of omission”). I haven’t read the 2008 engineering report (I can’t put my hands on it), but I have read the 2015 report, and I don’t recall reading about “serious” risks of sinkholes. In fact, Thurber states in their 2015 report that there are risks, but that they are not able to quantify them (Section 11.6). Therefore, I suppose they were even less able to quantify the risks in 2008.
Mr. Belle blames the District of Sechelt for allowing those houses to be built in the first place. Now, how would Mr. Belle react if the B.C. or the Canadian government would deny him the right to live on the West Coast because of the well-known risk of a “serious” earthquake? The potential risk of damages and casualties from that earthquake is a lot higher than a few sinkholes on the Sunshine Coast, right? And how will Mr. Belle react after he survives that earthquake? Will he also blame the government for allowing us to live here?
There are risks everywhere, and we can’t stop living because of those risks. We can only try to manage those risks, and this is what the District of Sechelt did in 2008 by having an engineering firm evaluate that risk. We now know the risk was higher than we thought, just like we would realize that the risk of a serious earthquake was higher than we thought if it happens while you are reading the comments on this page.
Marc Theriault, Sechelt
