Author: sandymcruer

sandymcruer

The Mt Underwood Fire was a close call

We were lucky. The usual summer winds blow up the Alberni Inlet from the south and west, especially in the afternoon. On August 11th they were blowing from the north, and for the next two days they blew from the North. That fluke of the weather saved Port Alberni.

We are still in a precarious position with respect to fire entering the city. There are many houses immediately adjacent to the tall 80 to 90-year-old forest on the South and East edges of the city. A large portion of the land adjacent to the homes is owned by the city, and beyond that land, there is another strip of Crown land before the Mosaic property is reached. I think there is a huge liability should a fire encroach on these homes. The City has a responsibility to be seen to take appropriate steps to reduce the chance of a wildfire. Unfortunately this may mean cutting some of the forest around the city limits.

This may not sit well with people in Port Alberni. But on the other hand there must be a certain amount of anxiety to those living on the south and east edges of the city. So I wonder what plans the city, and the Regional District has or is contemplating to do something to lower the chance of a wildfire encroaching on the city.

sandymcruer

The Cameron River & Roger Creek Were Once Connected

Cameron Canyon

Roger Creek flows through Port Alberni into the mouth of the Somass River. It is fairly unremarkable near tidewater. But 600 meters upstream, it runs through the bottom of a canyon that that has been carved through a big slab of shale bedrock before it hits tidewater. The top is about 25 meters above the creek and the cliffs are near vertical. The canyon is about 10 km long and big enough to make me wonder where all the water came from to make such a large canyon. The upper reaches of the creek flow down from the shoulders of McLaughlin Ridge, a high plateau that forms the western slopes of the Cameron River. There is no sign of the water needed.

Google Maps offers a possible answer – the Cameron River. A small ephemeral tributary of Roger Creek flows from a location near the top bank of a large ravine through which the Cameron River flows. But the bottom of the ravine and the Cameron River, is 60 meters below. Confused? See the maps below.

A geologic fault line must have ruptured ages ago and either pushed up the land on the west side of the Cameron River, or dropped the land on the other side down about 60 meters. The shape of the slopes on each side of the fault are about the same. I believe this would account for the size of the Roger Creek Canyon.

On a final note, I wonder if the fact that the Hupacasath First Nation claims the Cameron River as part of their traditional territory is a result of a story about the event that changed the course of these toe streams.

Roger Creek shale cliff
sandymcruer

The Future of the Log Train Trail

A recent public engagement effort on the Log Train Trail left me thinking about decisions the ACRD has made regarding Off Road Vehicles (ORVs) on the Log Train Trail.

The ACRD Board has adopted a Management Plan that says that traffic by ORVs is around 50%, more than by all other uses combined. I’m not at all surprized. These vehicles and their reputation have figuratively driven many hikers off this trail. And now you’ll see even fewer of them. Hikers, cyclists, and horseback riders are incompatible with ORVs. They were saying that 40 years ago in my forest recreation class at university! Yet hear we are!

Some of the ACRD’s portion of the trail must remain ORV-free. That wasn’t an option in the consultant’s management plan. Did the Board have the imagination to consider this?

To me, the ACRD has dragged its feet right from the start, through the whole process of creating the Log Train Trail and maintaining it. It hasn’t abided with the agreement with the Ministry of Transportation that restricted its use to Active Transportation. Enforcement of this requirement has been negligible. Have any of the complaints been resolved by penalty?… Any? Or have they all quietly disappeared? So how can the board reps and staff speak of it as a done deal? “It just has to get by the Ministry of Transport.” We’ll see about that!

I mentioned that the reason there is so much use of the Log Train Trail by ORVs is because pedestrians are reluctant to use it. With this decision,  it is completely unmanaged until a committee is struck,  meets, and makes a strategy for transiting to the plan. So, do what you like folks! There are no restrictions! And they won’t enforce any that do come into play.

It really irked me to be told at the meeting that the City should have no say on the committee to implement the recommendations when they have two seats on the board.  

You know, the irony of all this is that the Management Plan commissioned by the ACRD was funded by the Canada Active Transportation Fund. What is “Active Transportation”? Active transportation is using your own power to get from one place to another. This fund is set up to promote Green Transportation! Just the opposite is the result of the plan!

sandymcruer

Devil’s Den Lake Bluffs Trashed

Devil’s Den lake is an obscure little lake you can easily hike around in an hour or so unless you really dawdle. It’s nestled at the foot of a range of big hills that form the south boundary of Sproat Lake. It is a 15 minute drive from Port Alberni. It’s perfect for a light afternoon excursion with the family.

The trail around it was built around a year ago by someone who put a great deal of work into it clearing brush and building decent bridges. No grant money went into this. The person or people who did it have done an excellent job out of the goodness of his heart. It is a beautiful lake and a beautiful hike. But, this was clearly done without any official sanction from the land owners. There are many such trails around the valley.

I have known about this lake for many years. I first used to take a very rough trail to the closest part of the lake, carved out by fishermen. There was a side trail that crossed (forded) the creek that drained the lake below the beaver dam. that held the lake at its current level. Then it went up to a rocky bluff that is covered in wildflowers in early May and provided a beautiful view of the lake and the mountainside beyond.

The Bluffs in1993

Bluffs in 1993

Later, I learned about another bluff just meters away through a brushy dip. the flowers there were even more spectacular. There you could find a bigger variety of them. Sadly, the fauna of both of these bluffs and others and others in the area are all being destroyed by Quad.s, or ATVs for the sake of joyriding. Not only that, they are being used to dump trash. The area has been used as a dump for quite a number of years. And it should stop.

The area around the lake falls within a large block of Crown Land and also includes two creeks and 4 ponds, as well as the lake. But this property also includes a 4X4Racing track, and a private gravel pit, and part of the local land fill. The road through the property

These bluffs have been driven over many, many times by ATVs,  have had trash illegally dumped on them, and brought wrecked sofas on them to sit on and enjoy the view . Most of these bluffs  may be irredeemably destroyed by now. I would like to see these vehicles banned and the trails they have made blocked.

The bluffs in 2023

sandymcruer

City Trail Walking Maps

I’m actually going to make an election promise! I promise that if I am elected to city council, I will fight tooth and nail, scratching and clawing to get better signs at the trailheads around town by the end of my term. I want the trail maps to have North at the top, to have the roads visible and not just the road names, maps that aren’t so faded you can’t read them anyway. They’ve been like that for at least 4 years. It’s just embarrassing.

sandymcruer

Campaign speech to the Chamber of Commerce

I’ll be speaking fairly quickly, and there may be people at the meeting who can’t hear well from where they are sitting. So here it is in print.

Hello everyone, thank you for being here.

I am running for city council in this election because for me, it is the next step. Over the 35 years I have lived here, I have been a professional forester, a nature tour guide, and a columnist for the AV News. I have served on the City’s Planning Advisory Commission, and the board of Tourism Alberni Valley. I started the Alberni Valley Politics Facebook page and helped start the Friends of the Burde Street Beaver Ponds Facebook page too. They now have 930 and 680 members respectively.

On the cards I’ve been handing out is a phrase which describes my issues: Reconciliation, Restoration and Resilience. Here’s how these words fit into my campaign.

Reconciliation means working with the local First Nations toward mutually beneficial relationships, in an atmosphere of trust and openness. The recent walk on Orange Shirt day was a special day for me because I saw people of all ages and nationalities coming together with open hearts and walking in solidarity together. That was big. We need more of that spirit.

By Restoration, I mean the restoration, and renewal of city infrastructure, that is replacing old water-mains before they fail, installing a storm water system so that our current system isn’t overburdened and our sewage lagoon doesn’t overflow. It means repaving our streets at a faster rate. It also means restoring a mature forest in our Community Watershed, China Creek so that we are confident in the quality of our water supply. And it also means restoring the three fish creeks that flow through Port Alberni, to habitat that encourages the salmon to build back their numbers. We should not accept that what has happened to them as the price of progress.

By Resilience, I am thinking about what is coming at us in the future. We live in uncertain times. Whether it be droughts, natural disasters, financial crises, heat domes, pandemics, supply chain issues, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, or something else, we need to be prepared.  This means planning and building our infrastructure to withstand more fluctuations, producing more of our own food in this valley, making our health care system robust and not permanently in crisis mode, ensuring our transportation networks are intact, our buildings energy efficient, and able to accommodate increasing numbers of people coming to our community.

I also have issues I want to talk about.

First, there is some good news.  The Burde Street Beaver Ponds, appears to be on its way to some sort of resolution. A year after the announcement of over a 1000 housing units around the ponds, no formal application has been submitted.  It looks like the property around the ponds themselves will be left as is. But there is still uncertainty about the creek that empties them and flow into Roger Creek, an endangered salmon creek.

Housing, particularly low-cost housing, is a critical issue. But in my mind there is ample room for infill. There are vacant lots and decrepit buildings all over the city, some vacant for years. The biggest stumbling block is timely building permits.  We need a simpler process and more staff badly.

The Somass Mill property is a thorny issue because there is great uncertainty about the cost of removing contaminated soil from the property. Until it is resolved nothing will happen there. If the costs turn out to be prohibitive, I am open to leaving it as an industrial site but with a harbour walkway along the edge of it. But here are two other preferred options to explore first.

Finally the update of the Official Community Plan, or OCP is a very important strategic document for the city. There is an OCP for every Electoral Area and municipality in the Regional District. Ours is the oldest, by far. It’s 15 years old. Everything from housing strategies to environmental protections is covered in it. Port Alberni is a very different place now compared to 15 years ago. The updating process underway, needs to continue in the next term.

My time is probably up. I want to thank you for listening to my thoughts and ideas for Council in the next term if I am elected. Good night.

sandymcruer

What I know about the Somass Mill site

What I know about the Somass Mill isn’t enough. But I have misgivings. I am talking about the five properties totalling 43 acres the City of Port Alberni bought for $5.3 million. The intention was to sell off most of the properties keeping part of it as public waterfront access and Park. The rest would be a mix of retail on the ground floor with living areas above.

Part of the deal is that no primary sawmilling can be done there for 5 years. I know first hand, that the San Group is interested in this property. So I wonder if the popular rumor, that the San Group wants to build a pellet plant qualifies?

Recently, I went on a walkabout there with Chris Alemany and others. He is advocating restoration of the Dry Creek estuary. That is a third option. Several mayoral candidates, a CHEK TV crew, two former senior employees from the mill, and citizens were there. The third option is to recreate the Dry Creek estuary that this site is built on.

What I learned is that the city hired a contractor to conduct Phase 2 technical contamination assessments on the site (See the link for a better idea of what that is.). As part of a due diligence investigation, the City conducted this assessment before the decision to purchase the mill was made.

Jim Rutherford was the Environmental Co-Ordinator of the Somass Mill site for many years before retiring. He learned about the purchase at the same time as the rest of us back in August of last year. Because he felt that he was likely the only staff person from the old mill able to discuss this issue with city staff, he asked for a meeting with Tim Pley and others. At that meeting, he was shown where the assessment samples were taken and showed them the location of key contaminated areas that were not discovered by the consultants. However the purchase had been completed at that time.

Three choices have been described so far: the San Group’s pellet mill, the mixed use of storefront with apartments and/or condos above and a walkway on the waterfront, or complete restoration of the Dry Creek estuary. All of them hinge on what lies beneath and what it will take to remediate the site.

sandymcruer

Some thoughts on Housing

I’ve been boning up on housing. It’s complicated. From high end to bottom end, there are shortages. But the need in the low end is most serious. But we don’t really know how bad it is. We don’t keep up-to-date statistics. Scot Smith says the last Canada Mortgage and Housing survey was about a year ago and doesn’t include all the private rental suites in town. But we know it’s tough to find a place, and expensive.

Yet we see buildings going up all over the place. According to city statistics The value of building permits has shot up from $16 million as the average for a year to $80 million. A new seniors home is about to be built, and one is about to open.

But even with all the new housing coming on line, prices are prohibitive for those living on fixed incomes, single women with children and lacking skills, those with disabilities and so on. So we see their desperation and despair on our streets and in shelters. The number of homeless from the latest survey a year or so ago is around 200.

I believe the Province is acutely aware of the issues and is working on them in their plodding, bureaucratic way. Consultation, and consensus takes time. I want to be part of bringing rent prices down and and rental vacancies going up, and will be looking for ideas and opportunities to do just that.

sandymcruer

The 10th Avenue Crossing

Here’s an issue that never seems to go away.

For those who are new to town, the north end of 10th Avenue dead ends at the top of the ravine, or canyon of Roger Creek. One of the reasons there is a traffic bottleneck on Gertrude is because a bridge across the Roger Creek Canyon has never been built. It would take a lot of congestion away from Gertrude Street. And access to the Pacific Rim Shopping Centre, Walmart, and Canadian Tire from South Port would be much faster. It seems like a no brainer.

And a fellow called to say just that, this afternoon. “Why hasn’t it been built?”, he asked.

Well it’s easy to say, there’s no money or political will. But that isn’t a very satisfactory answer. There’s more to it.

First, it would be a very big bridge. From the top of the canyon on one side, to the top of the canyon on the other side is around 250m. It is a longer crossing than the Highway 4 bridge across the Sproat River. So that’s a lot of money to invest. There is no way the City of Port Alberni could pay for it without help from more senior levels of government. That may be more likely now as we have an MLA, Josie Osborne, who is a Minister in the BC Government.

But there are other things to consider, Roger Creek itself. It is a salmon-bearing stream. In former times Coho runs were abundant in it. They are still there but much reduced in number despite numerous efforts to enhance the run. Construction of a very large bridge over a creek with a fragile salmon run could easily make the run even more fragile. It any landslide happened during construction it would end up in the creek immediately. It would also be very difficult to prevent silt and erosion from entering the creek during construction.

And now there’s the fact that The Scott Kenny Trail lies beneath any proposed orientation of the bridge. Construction would creak significant overhead hazards, forcing that part of the trail to close for however long the construction took.

Finally there is the issue of all those people in the neighbourhood at the north end of Tenth would be very unhappy to see their homes, homes that they may have bought because of the wooded ravine out their back door, become a major thoroughfare. I happen to know people who live at each end of the proposed crossing. Nobody likes to be told that it is for the greater good. So we sit…

Next entry Friday– Housing

Beyond the trees is Roger Creek Canyon
sandymcruer

Why am I running?

Good question. Every time I think about it, I come up with a different answer.

When I was a young man out of high school in Ottawa, and working at the Experimental Farm (hoeing weeds, believe it or not) I remember meeting a young guy who said he wanted to be a Politician. That was the last thing I wanted to be. My, how we change!

I’m running because Port Alberni is my home, despite growing up in Ottawa. It’s been 35 years since a freshly qualified young forester moved to town, me his wife. All our friends are here. And there is something about this valley that tells me it could be a self-sustaining community in many, many ways.

I’m running because I’m retired. Not having children, my wife and I have time to devote to our passions, mine being a greater interest in politics, working toward restoring damaged ecosystems, rivers and creeks; and more personal ones like birding, gardening, and being a Freemason.

I’m running because I’ve found myself in a position where this is the next step. After my career, I had operated a local tour company conducting day-trips and nature tours. I wrote an outdoors column for the AV Times, and then for the AV News, and since Covid, posted posts here in my blog. When the news conference hit a little over a year ago that The San Group was proposing a huge development around the Burde Street Ponds, I was aware of what was coming, but not the scale of it. It seemed like it had to be me that said something, so I stepped up.

Things have changed on the proposed development in the past year. The city is still waiting for an application, an application that will take months to assess. It has an eight-month backlog (as of a couple of months ago) of other permits ahead of them. An official from the San Group called a couple of days ago, to say that because they have a huge new mill in Langley that is taking all their time, they are not in any hurry to do anything. This is what they say. So the issue isn’t urgent by any means anymore, but isn’t going away. It was clear to me that they still plan to “make money from the property” as it was expressed to me.

So I’m running for council as the next step. And this city needs to have an environmental advocate on council. In this time of uncertainty, with war, famine, floods, disease, and large refugee populations on the move, we need to prepare for the future, not to pretend that it’s steady as she goes in this little valley.

That’s why I’m running.

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PS. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be talking about election issues in more posts. Questions? I’m happy to answer. Scoldings? Not so much, but I’ll listen.