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B.C. Transit to clear red-listed wetland next week

Final approvals almost in place for agency to build new transit hub on B.C. Hydro’s land
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Got Pavement? B.C. Transit made its final decision to pave a red-listed wetland in Whistler

Two months after B.C. Transit started quietly scoping out a red-listed wetland in Whistler as a future location for their new transit facility, the Crown agency has now made a final decision to pave the land as soon as possible.

B.C. Transit wants to remove all the wetland’s trees, bushes and vegetation by next week.

“We are hoping, with various approvals in place with B.C. Hydro, that we will be able to move in and do more extensive clearing and grubbing to better refine the project’s costs in final detail,” confirmed Steve New, senior vice president of B.C. Transit on Wednesday, Aug. 6.

While New said B.C. Transit was confident in their ability to mitigate the transit hub’s impact on the wetland, their plans have been a source of controversy within the Whistler community since their intentions were made known earlier this summer.

At issue is the fact that the wetland is owned by B.C. Hydro, a Crown corporation, and therefore exempt from the municipality’s regulations, including its policy of protecting wetlands.

Earlier this week, Mayor Ken Melamed had said that council was hoping to give their comments to B.C. Transit during their scheduled Aug. 18 meeting. But by Tuesday evening, the municipality received information from B.C. Transit that they plan to begin work on the site before that date.

“Due to time pressures to make sure that B.C. Transit can utilize this building season, which they need in order to get this completed on time, they ended up making their final decision more quickly than we had anticipated,” said Michele Comeau Thompson, spokesperson for the Resort Municipality of Whistler on Wednesday.

“It was their intention, and ours, for them to come to the Aug. 18 council meeting and present the information and move forward from there.

“B.C. Transit regretted having to accelerate this to the point where they weren’t able to present to council in advance,” she said.

As a result of the accelerated construction schedule, council will not get a chance to debate the Crown agency’s plans before the clearcutting begins.

Comeau Thompson said, however, that the RMOW does support B.C. Transit’s site selection for the transit facility that will house Whistler’s fleet of 20 hydrogen buses coming in 2009, along with a hydrogen fueling station, because it is centrally located and B.C. Transit has plans to mitigate the facility’s environmental impact.

B.C. Transit’s environmental review and fisheries site survey, which Pique Newsmagazine received as this story went to press, states: “Based on the preliminary site plan, construction will require the infilling of existing wetted areas resulting in a total in-stream impact area of approximately 240 square metres. Construction will also require the removal of riparian habitat resulting in a total riparian impact area of approximately 16,200 square metres.”

New said that B.C. Transit plans to mitigate the environmental damage it will cause by redirecting the unnamed creek on the property to create a new wetland-like environment. This “build wetland” will maintain habitat linkages between Nesters Pond to the south and Nicklaus North Golf Course to the north. It will also resemble the original wetland enough to support a “diversity of plants and wildlife species.”

B.C. Transit received approval from the Ministry of Environment late last week to make these changes to the property.

But biologist Bob Brett said he is troubled that Whistler continues to lose wetlands in spite of how important they are for wildlife.

“I personally dislike the term mitigation because it implies that we can develop what we want and then fix things afterwards,” said Brett.

“I would much prefer we didn’t develop sensitive areas in the first place, since our level of understanding how natural systems work is still pretty low.”

He added that if B.C. Transit cannot be stopped from developing the site, then their plans to re-instate a proper watercourse from Nesters Pond through their land and create a new wetland at least helps a bit.

“It is a second-best solution in my mind, but at least it will maintain some habitat,” said Brett.

Councillor Eckhard Zeidler, who has actively been drawing attention to the issue since B.C. Transit first moved bulldozers onto the site May 26 for their environmental and geotechnical studies, added that it will be embarrassing if B.C. Transit goes ahead and paves the wetland to house environmentally-correct hydrogen buses.

“I very much doubt that B.C. Transit would put both Premier Campbell and the federal government in the embarrassing position of having to explain why the $89 million they are investing in the buses and the hydrogen highway from San Diego ends in Whistler on a paved over wetland,” said Zeidler on Tuesday.

“That’s a heck of a lot of money invested in what is supposed to be a positive global perception of B.C. and Canada and that could be undone in a heartbeat by paving over a wetland for the end station. The hydrogen buses are an important demonstration project for the province and the country that can ill afford to be labeled as green wash because of a poor choice of location.”

He added: “B.C. Transit has options, including previously disturbed sites. I am sure they’ll make the right choice.”

B.C. Transit has been looking for a new location for their bus maintenance facility since September 2007 when it was announced that Whistler would be receiving the 20 hydrogen cell buses. The current bus facility in Function Junction is not large enough to accommodate the new buses.

According to B.C. Transit, since the Whistler transit system serves over 3 million passengers a year and ridership continues to grow, the transit system has outgrown the Function Junction location.

The municipality has also been concerned for some time about the dead-head costs and extra emissions incurred with a transit facility that is not centrally located in Whistler.

Currently, the only thing preventing B.C. Transit from going in and clearing the wetland is final approval from B.C. Hydro. And New said they planned to receive this approval by the end of this week.

B.C. Transit’s latest proposal would not be the first man-made structure on the wetland. Water from Nesters Pond already passes under Terasen Gas’s local headquarters and the municipal works yard, before heading into the B.C. Hydro lands and then funneling into Green Lake.

However the wetland complex in question is one of the last remaining wetlands in Whistler. Over the past 50 years, Whistler has lost about 72 per cent of its wetlands due to human activity.