All Hands on Deck for Juan de Fuca
Photo: Stephen Legault
July 2011
Tied to an antiquated voting structure, the Capital Regional District Board on July 13 were forced to watch tiny Committee A vote 4:1 to move re-zoning another step closer to a sprawling resort development. This disappointing decision came despite thousands of letters and emails from citizens, and repeated appeals to Minister Ida Chong to revisit the flawed voting structure of the regional body.
Read more about the July 13 CRD meeting.
Now it’s all hands on deck for Juan de Fuca! The proposal has been approved for a public hearing in August (date TBA). In the next few weeks, it is crucial to keep up the pressure and keep the issue alive in the media and government.
TAKE ACTION: Please join us on August 5 for a field trip to Bear Beach where the proposed resort would most devastate the wilderness trail. Bring your camera to document the beauty and majesty of our wild coast. Please RSVP here.
When: Friday, August 5, at 10 am
Where: Bear Beach trailead access
Driving directions: Take Highway 17 from Sooke through Jordan River. Travel approx 5km to China Creek Bridge then 6.6 km from bridge to a yellow gate on the water (left) side with pull-over parking space for several cars on the right side. Please let us know if you need a ride or have extra space in your vehicle.
The trip will be guided by Sierra Club BC’s marine campaigner, Colin Campbell, and long-time Juan de Fuca resident Sid Jorna.
Please write to our decision-makers. Even if you have already written, please send a letter to Premier Christy Clark and Minister Ida Chong, as well as your municipality’s representative on the Capital Regional District Board. Or write a letter to the editor of the Times Colonist, Vancouver Sun, or your local paper.
Sierra Club BC assisted at the birth of this beloved regional trail. We will continue using all the means at our disposal to ensure its protection.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the B.C. parks system. The popular Juan de Fuca is a crown jewel in the B.C.’s parks system. It deserves to be protected and expanded to mark this historic occasion!
At the July 13 meeting, many CRD Directors spoke thoughtfully and articulately against the re-zoning and the proposal by Marine Trail Holdings to build 257 vacation homes, a luxury lodge, spa, restaurant, and two recreation centres next to the popular Juan de Fuca trail.
Several mentioned literally thousands of letters and emails opposing the resort and calling for protection of the area adjacent to the trail. Sierra Club BC supporters alone sent over 500 letters to Premier Christy Clark and Sierra Victoria local group spoke at every CRD meeting and public hearing since February. Read a letter to the editor of the Sooke News Mirror by Sierra Victoria member Caspar Davis.
The fact that such an unequivocal and powerful demonstration of public will went disregarded raises deeply troubling questions about the democratic process at both regional and provincial levels.
What happens next?
The Director of the Juan de Fuca electoral area will call a public hearing on the re-zoning by-law in August. Sierra Club BC and Sierra Victoria will continue to press for the protection of Juan de Fuca lands and for a voting structure that gives the whole CRD Board - our elected representatives from all municipalities and electoral areas - a clear mandate to make decisions on issues that affect the whole region.
The story of Juan de Fuca
When Juan de Fuca park was created in the mid-1990s, the buffer zone around it was part of a Tree Farm Licence and couldn’t be developed. Now some of those lands have been sold, and a developer plans to construct a massive resort--stretching along 16 kilometres of the renowned Juan de Fuca wilderness trail--that includes 257 vacation homes, a luxury lodge, spa, restaurant, two recreation centres and other buildings.
The resort would threaten the park’s wilderness and wildlife values, and our Wild Coast, and contravene the Regional Growth Strategy for the Capital Regional District (CRD).
Please join over 500 Sierra supporters who have already written a letter to the B.C. government asking the province to take immediate steps to expand and protect Juan de Fuca Provincial Park by including the former Tree Farm Licence 25 lands now slated for development, from the ocean to Highway 14. Write a letter to Premier Christy Clark.
At a May 11 meeting, the CRD board voted to ask the province to reconsider the voting structure given that outdated legislation allows a small committee of the Board to make decisions on land use changes affecting the whole region. Sierra Club BC spoke at that meeting - as we have been doing at every meeting and public information session since February.
Under the current CRD voting structure -- put into place when the lands buffering Juan de Fuca park were part of the Tree Farm License and not available for development-- a decision about the rezoning proposal would be made by a small CRD committee responsible for the Juan de Fuca area only. On April 19, that committee voted to proceed with the proposal, recommending that it go to first and second reading, and to a public hearing.
Read Sierra Club BC staffer Colin Campbell's blog about his hike along the Bear Beach part of the Juan de Fuca trail.
Read an op-ed in the Times Colonist by former federal Environment Minister David Anderson and others.
"The trail is protected by a very narrow buffer zone, and any encroachment on it by buildings and machinery would ruin the trail experience for people and its usefulness to wildlife as a coastal corridor for large mammals such as black bear and the Vancouver Island wolf," said Sierra Victoria member Caspar Davis.
“This proposal is a continuation of the trend to sacrifice even more forest and farmland in this region," said Sierra Victoria group co-chair Patricia Molchan. “It is bad for both climate change and food security. Scattering developments onto farmlands and into remote areas offers no benefits to the community as a whole. Instead it increases carbon emissions, and destroys both wildlife habitat and precious agricultural resources.”
Sierra Victoria and Sierra Club BC are part of a broad coalition of groups that support a moratorium on any land use changes in the CRD until the regional sustainability strategy is complete and indigenous governments have been consulted and accommodated.
