A dark day in BC

And no, I'm not talking about the weather, though the gloomy skies this afternoon appear to be in agreement. It's a dark day because today is the day BC Hydro has begun filling the reservoir created by the Site C Dam on the Peace River. 

The water will flood 6,649 hectares of farmland. To put that into the more familiar terminology most of us still use, that's just about 16,000 acres. But even that number doesn't really compute as to just how massive this reservoir will be when it's full--and how much arable land we're losing. 

About the closest familiar bit of land that's pretty much equivalent to an acre is a football field. So, if you think about how much food could be grown on one football field, and we're talking 16,000 of them--well, I think you get my drift over how hideous this loss is. 

It gets even worse if you stop to consider how much farmland we keep losing in the Lower Mainland, particularly in Richmond and Surrey where condos, mega-houses, and warehouses keep being built, covering our farmland. 

As our climate keeps getting warmer, the tragedy only grows, as there's little doubt the region would soon be capable of growing foods that long had to be grown further south. 

I know, I've been ranting about the folly of this project for a long time, but somehow I tricked myself into thinking it still might not happen. Sadly, it turns out, I was very wrong. 

Now I guess we'll need to find a name for this dreadful new 'lake' that will cover so much. Lake Disappointment? Lake Horrible? How about Lake Despair. 

So much for clean energy

It's over a week since I've been home from a trip to Victoria. My reason for being there was the launch of a new anthology that contains a bit of my work. 

While a friend and I were leaving, taking the bus out to Swartz Bay to get the ferry home, we passed a group of people outside a building where the government was holding a meeting. Many of them carried signs, some of them even had 'Site C' on their banners. 

Their goal appeared to be reminding those inside of their public commitments to care for the environment. Yet sadly, we know that pretty much ALL the power generated by the mega-dam will go to Northeastern BC to power fracking operations. 

Frack. A word that I still believe will, in the future, replace our current F-word as an ugly expletive, as it won't be long until people understand how dangerous fracking is, and how it has the potential to despoil our precious groundwater, a resource (unlike petroleum) we cannot survive without. 

Helpless

That's the word for what I've been feeling lately. Unable to do anything about all that's going on. 

The horrific bombing of civilians in Ukraine leaves me feeling empty, drained. My little vase with sunflowers and forsythia branches is all I have in the way of small hopes. The sunflower, with its face turning ever towards the warmth of the sun, is a symbol of Ukraine, the national flower. And the forsythia, with its fat little buds, will open soon with a promise for spring. 

Sadly, on a much smaller scale, is the peril I am feeling for the fate of my city, with its optimistic sounding slogan, The Future Lives Here. 

Considering the swaths of trees that have been disappeared along the King George Highway (oops, more rebranding, as it's now called King George Boulevard, aka KGB), it's not going to be a very green future. Somehow I've always had it in mind that the word 'boulevard' suggests an elegant, tree-lined route. Not any more, not here. This despite the many cautions about climate change heating up and the necessity to protect and plant as many trees as we can. 

Even as I am typing this, the City Council is, I believe, about to rubber-stamp approval for fourth and final reading on the fate of lands abutting the Tata'lu/Little Campbell River, the area that's been rebranded with the gentrified name, South Campbell Heights -- which sounds more like a suburb in a Nancy Drew book than a plan to pave an aquifer. 

Helpless as well in that I can't even manage to open the supposed live-stream access to the Council meeting. Not that I would have been able to do anything, but I believe it's important to bear witness when we can. 

Which, I suppose, is why I keep watching tv news -- to bear witness to the massacre and destruction in Ukraine. All I've been able to do towards helping has been to make a donation to the Canadian Red Cross, where I believe the federal government is still matching what we give. 

Hoping that all of us will find our own ways of honouring all that's going on during these times that feel more and more like the defeat of goodness, the triumph of evil, sometimes like maybe the end of the world. 

Coulda, shoulda

Once upon a time the City of Surrey had the opportunity to make a park. As you can see from the photo, it looks as though they already had one. 

In actuality, it was the site of a nine-hole golf course. But more importantly, the site had several ponds which served as a home to nesting ducks and other migratory birds who stopped by along their flightpaths.

There was also a salmon-bearing stream, now lost. 

Somehow the City Council decided it made more sense to turn it into a parking lot. Maybe they misunderstood Joni Mitchell's song, and thought that a parking lot meant paradise. 

The photo is from autumn of 2004, and those rolling green hills are long gone and paved, part of a shopping complex with a Walmart at its heart. If they'd moved that centre a mere one block to the east, and declared the site as parkland, the thousands of people who now live in the many nearby townhouses built since then, those families would have had a greenspace park. But no, instead they have a place for buying imported goods. No doubt useful in some respects, but hardly the place for a picnic. 

Surrey is once again planning to pave another environmentally sensitive area. And surprise, surprise, despite the fact that the 'public' meeting (which ran until after 2 a.m.) heard from many speakers who presented science-based reasons for opposing the proposed development, Surrey's Mayor McCallum and his four sidekicks on Council voted instead for construction of an industrial park there. And yes, that term has to be one of the most contradictory oxymorons of our time. 

The area where this construction is proposed contains a river where endangered salmon species still live, and is above an aquifer which feeds the wells of many residences. As one of the presenters put it: "Building a series of warehouses above an aquifer -- whose idea was that?!"

The Zoom meeting for public input began in the afternoon and then ran for just over 12 hours. Because I am a person who cares, I was present for the duration. Yet, as has been apparent at other such presentations in the past, it became clear that the elected officials had their minds made up in advance. 

When the five minutes allotted me for my presentation came up (at 10:30 p.m.), I had the unsettling experience of being interrupted by the mayor -- who basically told me to shut up -- an occurrence that rattled me, I admit. I can't help but think that's partly the reason I've had such a hard time getting around to writing this particular post. 

All that I -- and many others -- had hoped for was that the proposal as currently described would be rejected so that it could be revised in a way that would protect the sensitive areas from having warehouses built on them. Warehouses which are being touted as places for employment opportunities for the people of Surrey, despite the fact that more and more warehouse work is being performed by robots, and not people at all. 

So yes, I think this is yet another error in the making by our municipal government, one that will prove to be regretted in the not-so-distant future. All we can hope is that some higher level of government will pronounce the plan as folly and stop it from going forward -- and, with luck, will determine that it's an area worthy enough of protection to be declared as parkland. 

It's hard to imagine...

 

..just how the City of Surrey managed to wangle its recently-announced designation as a "Tree City" as when I look around I see small forests and big trees coming down, down, down.  

One of the most reliable spokespersons for the trees -- for years now -- is a woman named Deb Jack. When she speaks, our know-it-all mayor offers his usual lip service and then votes in a way that shows he's yet again ignoring the things she says.  

The photo above shows one of a batch of trees that bordered the edge of a property where a little old house was torn down, no doubt to be replaced by a giganto, absurdly big one. 

I'd have thought that trees that close to the property line would not have had to be chopped, as there are some limits (too small, but they're officially there) as to how much clearance there needs to be between the building and the line. Besides, the next door 'neighbour' is an elementary school, so the 'natural fence' provided by trees would have meant shade, privacy, and a cushion from the noisy play outside of a school.

The "Tree City" designation requires a city to show a plan for evaluating specific trees, for having a policy that requires replacement of trees that have been removed -- and yes, Surrey has these, but they're plans as thin as the paper they're written on. They're often ignored, and as for replacements -- huh? How does a 3-foot cedar shrubbery replace a tree that's over 50 years old. 

I'm not the only one who feels our Council's approval of trees falling everywhere is unacceptable, but with the current 'representatives' sitting, neither we nor the trees seem to stand a chance. 

Surrey: good for making promises as hollow as a tree gone rotten with disease.

What's a bigger word than disappointment?

I suppose those little posies above the kitchen sink will be the last bouquets for the year, as we had a flash of frost the other night. As always, the brass swans seem oblivious, but the little pie crow looks like he's happily singing to them (no one ever told him he's not much of a singer). 

Today, especially, I am needing a splash of colour, as I learned some devastating news. The Peace River diversion at the Site C dam site (damn site) occurred on October 3rd. Sure, BC Hydro put an announcement on their website, but how many of us monitor that corporate hype. 

It was only by a small accident, communicating with someone not in government, that this tragedy came to my attention. Surely this will now provide the excuse that indeed we have passed the point of no return on this project. 

Worst of it all is that it took place while we were in election mode in this province. And even though Sonia Furstenau, our wonderful Green Party leader, raised a question about Site C during that forum, she didn't receive much of an answer -- and the premier certainly didn't reveal that the diversion had occurred (which surely he knew). 

Disappointed is too small a word for all that's going through my mind right now. I can't help but feel that the people of BC have been betrayed by a smarmy kind of avoidance I never expected from our public representatives.