As 2015 drew to a close and families across the country planned for New Year festivities, Sonia Furstenau was busy trying to figure out how many officials, journalists and photographers she could get up in a helicopter on January 6 if she divided the day into 30-minute departure times.

Furstenau, an elected representative for the Cowichan Valley Regional District, is a resident of Shawnigan Lake where a protracted battle to keep contaminated waste out of a local watershed is gaining new momentum.

Along with other members of the Shawnigan community and the Save Shawnigan Water campaign, Furstenau arranged to get elected representatives and media up in the air above Shawnigan Lake and, a mere five kilometres uphill, above a nearby contaminated waste site.

If it was going to take a day’s worth of helicopter rides to generate media attention for her community’s plight, then, well, “get to the choppa.”

Four years ago, Furstenau agreed to fill a one-year teaching position at Dwight School Canada, a prestigious international boarding school located on a sprawling 23-acre campus on Shawnigan Lake. The alpine lake setting and small, friendly community won her family over immediately.

“We moved here by accident,” Furstenau said with a laugh, adding her family agreed to give the school one year before returning to Victoria. During that first year in Shawnigan, however, her blended family of seven began to put down permanent roots.

“We fell in love with the lake, with the community and the Cowichan Valley.”

But as Furstenau was eyeing Shawnigan as the perfect place to settle down and raise her children, the B.C. government and waste disposal company South Island Aggregates (SIA) had identified the area for something entirely different.

Shawnigan Lake. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

In 2012, SIA, owned by parent company Cobble Hill Holdings Ltd., applied for a permit to dump 100,000 tonnes of contaminated waste soil into a local quarry located in the headwaters of Shawnigan Lake, a local source of drinking water for the 7,500 permanent residents of Shawnigan Lake. During the summer months, that number balloons to 12,000.

The B.C. Ministry of Environment granted SIA a 50-year permit, allowing the company to dump a total of 5 million tonnes of industrial waste containing furans, dioxins, chlorinated hydrocarbons, glycols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, toluene, xylene and other materials know to cause cancer, brain damage, and birth defects in humans.

The landfill site is flanked by streams that flow downhill into the Shawnigan Lake watershed.

SIA maintains the site is cradled in a 75-foot layer of nearly impermeable bedrock. The company estimates it would take approximately 103,000 years for contaminants to reach local groundwater and migrate into Shawnigan Lake.

South Island Aggregates' landfill site. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

SIA based these estimates on the geotechnical work of Active Earth Engineering. In the summer of 2015 a document was anonymously provided to the Shawnigan Residents Association that showed SIA and Active Earth Engineering signed a profit sharing contract for the 50-year lifespan of the landfill. SIA maintains the agreement was never acted on and eventually abandoned.

Yet the community is arguing the project review process was corrupted and that the B.C. Ministry of Environment, as well as the Environmental Appeal Board through which the community sought to have the permit pulled, relied too heavily on the expertise of Active Earth — a company they say had a clear conflict of interest.

A judicial review in the B.C. Supreme Court began on Monday, January 11 in Victoria. The review is expected to take two weeks to complete.

“It doesn’t take long to understand why this community is up in arms and so determined to fight what is going on here,” Furstenau said.

“Putting a contaminated landfill on a mountain at the headwaters of your drinking watershed above the lake that is the heart of your community is insanity. We do not accept this and we never will.”

Up on the mountain during the January 6 protest Furstenau’s sentiment seemed widespread.

On that cold morning nearly 500 residents gathered outside the gates of SIA’s private facility to prevent the latest shipment of contaminated soil from reaching the landfill site. Protesters held signs that read “pull the permit” and “Save Shawnigan Water” and children built snowmen in front of a line of blockaded work trucks.

“I think almost anyone can tell you this doesn’t on the surface seem to be logical,” Steve Housser, Shawnigan resident and former CBC journalist, said outside the landfill site.

Protesters at the landfill site, January 6, 2015. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

“The government says the science says it’s okay,” Housser said. “Unfortunately that science was bought and paid for by SIA.”

Housser who ran as a BC Liberal candidate in the Cowichan Valley riding during the last provincial election said revelations about the profit-sharing agreement between SIA and Active Earth engineers “completely undercuts their independence, their professional integrity and almost makes a mockery of the word science.”

He added the community does not feel it had a legitimate role to play in the decision-making process.

A "Save Our Shawnigan Water" sign sits on the site of the contaminated soil landfill, January 6. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

“Any say we had was ignored,” Housser said, adding the community has sent in a 15,500 signature petition, demonstrated at the legislature and held multiple rallies. “I don’t know what the hesitation is to stop this thing.”

“If it can be done to us, if somebody thinks they can dump toxic, contaminated waste into a watershed in Shawnigan, who’s next?” he said.

Dwight Canada School student Dimitri Monti-Browning also attended the protest along with a handful of classmates.

“I feel that a lot of the Shawnigan Lake community and a lot of people in B.C. and on Vancouver Island really care about Shawnigan Lake and don’t want to ruin this beautiful place,” Monti-Browning said.

He added the night before the event he was with his grandmother, who owns a home on Shawnigan Lake Road. “I went over to her house last night and she was crying because we don’t want to lose our water and as I said before this beautiful place.”

“We want to save our water,” he said.

Dwight School Canada student Dimitri Monti-Browning, centre right, at the protest with classmates. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

Calvin Cook, president of the Shawnigan Resident’s Association, said the community has a lot of legitimate concerns about the risk of seismic events, like the December 29 4.7 magnitude earthquake that shook houses in Victoria, or what happens over time when the plastic liners used in the pits begin to break down.

“The quarry itself is 15 per cent dug. Still 85 per cent remains to be blasted,” Cook said. “We’ll have containment cells next to and adjacent to an active blasting site. That is unprecedented. That has never occurred before.”

“Shawnigan Lake and its citizens are being used as a test laboratory for this facility.”

On January 6 South Island Resource Management, the company managing the disposal site since June 2015, release a statement, saying, "We are fully compliant with the Ministry of Environment Waste Discharge Permit and with the Ministry of Mines Permit.There is no quantifiable risk from the site to human health in the Shawnigan Lake watershed and we continue to hope that reasonable debate will prevail.”

In November a breach of surface runoff from the site prompted the Vancouver Island Health Authority to issue a no-used water advisory to Shawnigan lake residents. 

Cook said despite what he sees as “unacceptable risks,” years of community opposition has fallen on deaf ears.

“Our minister [Mary Polak] and our Premier have steadfastly refused to act,” he said. “All we are asking them to do is put a stay in place to prevent further contaminants being brought to this site until a complete judicial review has been heard.”

During the ongoing judicial review, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Sewell will hear evidence the permit holder lacks credibility and relied on faulty engineering advice. 

Cook said while that review was waiting to hit the courts in November, new contaminated industrial waste was being trucked in from Port Moody.

“When we win, the site will have to be remediated,” Cook said. “Those costs will be borne by every citizen in B.C. Why further increase those costs? Let the judicial review take place. Let all the facts be heard by a judge.”

From an ad hoc helicopter landing pad one the shore of Shawnigan Lake, Port Moody city council member, Zoe Royer said she is “very concerned” about industry from her riding shipping contaminated waste to this community.

“I’m not here representing the city of Port Moody,” Royer said. “I’m here because I’m deeply concerned about the situation in Shawnigan Lake, about the contamination that is happening in this community.”

“My heart goes out to the people in this community. This was a pristine watershed and many, many people depend on it for their drinking water and their livelihood.”

“We have to stand together and help to stop this,” Royer said before boarding the helicopter for an aerial view alongside two other Port Moody city councilors.

Georgia Collins. Photo: Jayce Hawkins/DeSmog Canada.

Shawnigan resident Georgia Collins, who lives on the lake beside the makeshift helicopter pad, said when the company first came to the community they said the landfill site would benefit everyone.

“They said it was something that would be very helpful to the community, that it would be cleaning up contaminated sites that are in the watershed already,” Collins said. “But it turns out that it’s a permit to dump 5 million tonnes of contaminated soil over 50 years and that soil can come from anywhere.”

Collins’ young son played around her legs as we spoke. “We do have elected representatives and we expect them to protect our water,” she said. “We expect them to protect our livelihoods. What we’ve seen is them constantly ignoring our community.”

She added that since 2012 the company and the provincial government tried to manage the community to limit public backlash.

“But we’re not going away.”

“It’s hard to see this going on, that this is possible in any community,” she said. “There is the beautiful silver lining that this has galvanized the people and I love the people here. They’re my community and I want to protect them.”

Collins said Environment Minister Mary Polak has the authority to place a hold on the permit at any time.

“We’re a community in unrest and we deserve to have this put on hold. We deserve to have trucks stopped while we wait for judges to make the right decision.“

Images by Jayce Hawkins for DeSmog Canada.

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The development group that has spent more than 24 years trying to build a controversial ski resort in the East Kootenay’s Purcell Mountains is not giving up without a fight.

Glacier Resorts Ltd. plans to ask for a judicial review of Environment Minister Mary Polak’s decision to pull the project’s Environmental Assessment Certificate. The group is also looking at building a smaller resort that would not have to go through a new environmental assessment process.

A July 20 letter to the chief administrative officer of Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality from Oberto Oberti of Pheidias Project Management Corp., the group that manages the project, says Glacier’s lawyers will submit a request for a judicial review of the minister’s “surprising decision” as soon as the case is prepared.

“Glacier cannot allow that the project be dismissed after having substantially done everything that it was asked to do and was permitted to do up to October 12, 2014, and it believes that a judicial review will show clearly that the Minister did not make a correct decision in declaring that the project was not substantially started,” says the letter.

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In the meantime, the company will work on minor amendments to the Master Plan and the Master Development Agreement to reduce the size of the project to below the threshold of Environmental Assessment regulations, Oberti wrote.

The smaller project could move forward under the provincial All Seasons Resort Policy, he suggested.

“The ASRP does not have the deadline created in the revised Environmental Assessment Act, a deadline that has become the latest issue in this project and that is not related to the sustainability or value of the project,” he wrote.

Plans for the billion-dollar, 6,300-bed Jumbo Glacier Resort ground to a halt last month when Polak withdrew the Environmental Assessment Certificate after concluding that the project had not substantially started in the 10 years since the certificate was granted.

Despite strong opposition from local politicians, environmental groups and residents, the province granted the EA certificate in 2004 and it was renewed in 2009, but construction progress was almost non-existent before the October deadline, which marked the expiry of the certificate.

At that time only two buildings were under construction and, in April, the company was handed a provincial stop work order as the footings were in avalanche paths.

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Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality, which has no residents and no buildings, was created by the province for the sole purpose of facilitating development of the resort and the letter from Oberti says he believes Mayor Greg Deck and the two-member council will “easily recognize that the work done in the five available weeks was more than substantial.”

The company has blamed protests, limited access to the area because of avalanche debris and bridge problems and bad weather for not making more progress.

However, Oberti says in the letter that, if the project had been allowed to continue, ski runs that are currently available only to heli-skiers, would be open to skiers in the near future.

“This would have created the certainty that this project so badly needs,” he said.

Robyn Duncan, executive director of Wildsight, one of the groups adamantly opposed to the resort, said the decision to ask for a judicial review is surprising as the minister’s decision was solid.

However, no request has yet been filed and, in addition, there are two court cases still under consideration, she noted.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has reserved her decision on an application by the West Kootenay EcoSociety to dissolve the municipality and the B.C. Court of Appeal is considering an appeal by the Ktunaxa First Nation of a judicial review that determined the B.C. government acted appropriately when it approved a Master Development Plan for Jumbo in 2012.

Duncan said no plans for a smaller development have yet been seen and opponents are researching what process could be used that would allow Glacier Resorts to forge ahead.

“There are lots of unanswered questions on how they would go about amending the documents,” she said.

“We are doing a lot of research into the mechanisms and hoops they would have to jump through.”

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The Peace Valley Landowner Association is celebrating a small victory following a Federal Court decision that four applications for judicial reviews of the massive Site C dam, planned for the Peace River, will be heard this summer.

The Association and representatives of B.C. and Alberta Treaty 8 First Nations appeared before Federal Court last week to oppose a BC Hydro motion to have the cases heard in May because of the financial implications if the Site C construction schedule was delayed. BC Hydro wants to start work on the $8.8-billion project in June.

The Landowner Association and First Nations argued that, if the hearings were fast-tracked, there would be insufficient time to prepare legal arguments and cross-examination plans.

The court ruled that the applications for judicial review – brought by the PVLA, Mikisew Cree, Athabasca Chipewyan, Prophet River, Doig River, West Moberly and McLeod Lake First Nations – will be set for this summer, depending on court availability, and will be heard consecutively by one judge. That could stretch the hearings into late summer.

Ken Boon, PVLA president, said the decision shows the court is not going to rush or let BC Hydro set the agenda.

“The government knew when they made this decision in December that these court cases had already been filed,” he said.

It is not the Association’s problem that BC Hydro may have to adjust its’ schedule, he added.

First Nations, whose application names several federal ministers and BC Hydro, are claiming the dam will destroy their traditional territory and way of life and allege the federal government has violated their treaty rights by failing to consider the potential impact.

The PVLA application claims environmental approvals of the dam were seriously flawed and that the two levels of government failed to consider the joint review panel’s assessment of the economics.

Site C, the third dam on the Peace River, will flood 5,550 hectares of land and generate enough power for 450,000 homes, but the joint review panel found the power would not be needed until 2028 at the earliest.

Meanwhile, B.C. Supreme Court has ordered that petitions for a judicial review by the PVLA and B.C. Treaty 8 First Nations will be heard by a single judge.

The Association’s review petition is set to be heard April 20 and no date has yet been set for the B.C. Treaty 8 hearing.

The two courts are involved because the Site C project was approved by the federal and provincial governments.

As the Site C approval wends its way through the courts, the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association is continuing its campaign to persuade the government to look more seriously at the potential of geothermal and on Wednesday released technical information it compiled for the report “Geothermal Energy: The Renewable and Cost Effective Alternative to Site C.”

CanGEA chair Alison Thompson said that the geothermal unit energy cost of $56-$73 MWh compares positively to the updated Site C cost to ratepayers of $58-$61MWh.

“If the B.C. government treats geothermal energy as a priority, not an afterthought, geothermal will provide firm energy beginning in 2018 at a lower cost than Site C and in a manner that benefits ratepayers, taxpayers, First Nations, the economy and the environment, not to mention having a carbon footprint that is lower than Site C,” she said.

Image Credit: B.C. Government

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