The District of Squamish is under the watchful eye of the provincial deputy inspector of dikes after municipal staff issued a site alteration permit to allow Skye Development to remove a sea dike.
The work contravenes the dike maintenance act and after receiving a complaint from a Squamish resident in October, the inspector approached the district and the developer to enforce compliance.
"The perimeter of that site is the official dike for protecting Squamish," said Pattle. "When we found out that the dike had been removed we certainly approached the municipality and we've been working with the municipality and the developer to come into compliance."
Director of community development Mick Gottardi said the district issued the developer a site alteration permit to make alterations to the dike for seismic upgrades subject to approval by the provincial dike inspector. But the permit actually allowed simply for the upgrading of soil conditions, said Pattle.
The developer verbally informed the district of provincial approval, said Gottardi, but written approval was never produced.The developer then proceeded to remove the dike with the intention of making it higher and with a sounder geotechnical structural design.Pattle said the situation would have been much worse if a second embankment had not been in place.
"If the dike had been removed without the other embankment of the [Third Ave.] road, wharf and rail line, that would've been very, very serious and we would've certainly taken far different action," said Pattle. "Hopefully in that case, they wouldn't have removed the dike. If they had any sense at all they wouldn't have done it, but I think there was some confusion over what was the official dike and what wasn't the dike."
The second embankment will protect downtown Squamish from flooding in all but cases of "large storms," according to Pattle, but warned "a lot of people might think that's the protection system, but it's not. We don't regulate it."
Certain long time downtown residents are accusing the dike removal along with the in-filling of a nearby retention pond as the cause of flooding during heavy rains late last year. But the pond's gravel in-fill blocks a crucial culvert outlet purposely, said Gottardi, because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has ordered the contaminated, so-called "stinky pond" water to be filtered before it enters the estuary. The developer used massive pumps to replicate the culvert's outflow.
Gottardi said that although the district discovered some shortcomings on the site - specifically improper receiving ditches - it is not responsible for the worst of the downtown flooding.
"In terms of causing the flooding at Fourth and Victoria, the main area where flooding was occurring, we're pretty convinced that the problems that they had didn't cause the flooding," he said.
The provincial dike maintenance office is now monitoring progress on preliminary work before the dike is rebuilt. The developer is responsible for hiring qualified professionals to oversee the project.
"We will visit the site to make sure it is proceeding as is needed," said Pattle. "We'll make sure that the appropriate qualified professionals are working on it and meeting our requirements, and once they've done that, then we will issue a dike maintenance act approval."Pattle said municipalities will sometimes remove dikes without approval.
"When that happens we notify the municipalities and hopefully we come under compliance not only with that issue, but we also internally organize their affairs so that that doesn't happen."
