The province is offering Whistler Paintball Adventures a three-year land tenure to operate in the Wedgemount area, against the municipality’s wishes.
Councillor Nick Davies, who expressed concern about the tenure application when it first came before council at the beginning of March, said he was surprised and disappointed by the decision.
"Council made it clear that we didn’t think it was in the best interests of our community (to put the paintball activities in that location)," said Davies this week.
Council also didn’t think granting the paintball tenure so close to some of the best mountain biking trails in the valley was a good idea, he said.
He added that the decision by Land and Water B.C. doesn’t say much for the partnership between the RMOW and the provincial government agencies.
The Regional Manager of LWBC Alec Drysdale said the municipality’s concerns were duly noted in the decision making process but were overridden by other government agencies.
"With any application we review all of the comments and we weigh all of the concerns," he said.
"That’s how our referral process works. We look to various levels of government and other ministry agencies for specialized comments."
For example, among Whistler council’s concerns was the negative impact the paintball activities would have on the ground vegetation in the area.
But Drysdale said the government’s environmental ministry, the Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection, did not raise any red flags about the environmental issues.
"We look to them as being the experts in environmental issues and they didn’t raise any concerns," he said.
"So it’s not that we ignore (the RMOW’s) comment but we look to the appropriate agency or the appropriate level of government to provide comment in our decision."
Another key factor in granting the application was that the area is in a timber license area and ultimately the whole area could be cut. This fact weakened the environmental argument.
Drysdale explained that had the municipality raised concerns about the zoning of the land being incongruent with paintball activities, that concern would have been given more weight.
When the application went before council for review, Davies and Councillor Caroline Lamont expressed their concerns about the proximity of the proposed paintball course to the mountain biking trails, namely Whistler’s longest and one of its newest trails, Comfortably Numb.
"My concern was the conflict between the mountain bikers and paintballers shooting high speed projectiles around," said Davies, adding that paintball operations should be on a piece of land, away from other recreational activities.
The operator will address this concern a number of ways, said Kevin Lee, commercial recreation manager with LWBC who recommended the application be approved.
"They were planning to put signage indicating that there were paintball activities there and some type of ribbon markers to indicate the extent of the paintball activities," said Lee.
"So there’s sufficient warning to the public who are using the mountain biking trails that there’s paintball activities happening in this area."
Davies has his doubts that signs or ribbons will be effective in minimizing conflict.
He has played paintball and knows how people can get riled up in the heat of the plastic paintball battle.
"People get all fired up simply because they’re having a good time," he said.
"(The signs) will be about as effective as the signage telling people not to go into the Cheakamus Valley and we all know how many times we have to haul people out (of that area)."
The Whistler Paintball Adventures tenure application is one of about 40 applications in the Sea to Sky corridor that have gone or are in the process of going before the LWBC for approval under the Tenure Incentive Program.
Whistler Paintball Adventures applied for tenure on Crown land because they were concerned about the long-term viability of their operations.
They have been operating on private land between Alpine and Emerald, known as the Rainbow lands, since 1990. But that land could be developed in the coming years, forcing Whistler Paintball Adventures to find a new home.
At the March council meeting when the paintball tenure came before council, Councillor Ken Melamed expressed concerns about the "explosion" of commercial recreation tenure applications on neighbouring Crown land.
Drysdale points out that though it may seem like an explosion of applications, the government is not approving every single one that comes through the door.
In addition, the province is going through this whole process in response to the public concern about rogue commercial recreation operators, using Crown land without proper tenure.
"First of all this whole tenure incentive program was a response to the request by industry and by local government and by the public to say ‘hey, there are all these users out there, we need to bring some control and order to this,’" said Drysdale.
"So it’s not as though the province went to it and said ‘hmmm, what program can we do that’s going to piss off Whistler.’
"Whistler was very concerned by the fact that there were lots of trespass operators out there. And so by having a program like TIP, you then are in a much better position to bring some order and regulation to what’s going out there because if you’ve got someone who’s tenured, regardless of whether you like the tenure or not, you’ve now got some control."
LWBC is in the process of preparing the documentation for the paintball tenure. The operators will have 21 days to accept the proposed three-year tenure.
