A response letter from the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) to the District of Squamish about the Eagle Mountain – Woodfibre Gas Pipeline (EGP) Project was underwhelming to some Squamish council members.
However, the letter agreed with the District that mitigation efforts by FortisBC towards gender-based violence were lacking so far and offered new requirements.
The EAO is a provincial Crown agency that co-ordinates environmental assessments of projects and helps all parties on a project understand and mitigate its impacts. The EAO letter was written by the deputy chief executive assessment officer and assistant deputy minister for the EAO, Chris Trumpy, and largely relates to District concerns about the EAO’s draft assessment report for the temporary workforce accommodation to be located on Powerhouse Springs Road.
One of the concerns raised by the District was about community safety.
Trumpy wrote to the District that “The EAO concurs with the District’s perspective that the mitigation measures proposed by FortisBC are insufficient to address the adverse effects on women and girls and is therefore recommending new mitigation measures in the proposed gender and cultural safety plan.”
“This new plan would require FortisBC to report complaints to a table of community partners, including the District, health authorities, law enforcement, service agencies and others, to inform adaptive management.”
In response to the District’s concerns over a lack of the project leaders’ communication with community and municipal government, Trumpy wrote the EAO “will continue to encourage the holders to strive for better co-ordination between the projects.”
Other concerns raised by the District such as potential risks of accidents or malfunctions, waste management, parking and road use, impact on greenhouse gas emissions due to increased size of workforce accommodation were largely left unchanged from previous assessments.
Although council voted unanimously to receive the letter at an Oct. 3 regular business meeting, two members spoke of their dismay with some of the response.
“The response was disheartening,” said Mayor Armand Hurford.
“We're left, I guess, where we started this process,” he continued, “which is collecting the pieces that fall through the processes of the other orders of government that frankly shouldn't be dropping as many pieces on us. Yet, here we are.”
Coun. Chris Pettingill said he did not have “a great deal of confidence” that the EAO would enforce conditions and plans.
“I'm left with the feeling or the concern that the B.C. EAO is really just leaving it up to us to address many legitimate community concerns that they do have better tools than us to deal with even if they're not perfect,” said Pettingill.
Although the response letter was a reply to the District’s relaying its direct concerns to them on Aug. 2, the letter also comes after two District resolutions were endorsed at the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention in September about the impacts of large infrastructure projects on both housing and community safety.
Those resolutions stemmed from the District’s experience with FortisBC and Woodfibre LNG and their pipeline and liquefied natural gas project.
As Coun. Jenna Stoner said in an interview with The Squamish Chief after UBCM, essentially the District wants the province to examine how it assesses infrastructure projects and hopefully take the impacts on housing and community safety into account early on in the approval process.
The province will have to respond further to these two endorsed resolutions.
More police officers: DOS
Also, on Oct. 3 at a special council business meeting, a report about the 2024-2028 financial plan noted that staff have requested four additional RCMP officers—paid for by the proponents—to start in 2024 to address “community safety needs” associated with these projects and said the District needed to start quickly on the hiring process.
“The current number of RCMP officers is not adequate to manage and address the anticipated community safety impacts of this project. The numerous WLNG and EMGP project sites, including proposed accommodation sites and transportation areas, are all located within or adjacent to the District, increasing the risk of incidents involving community members and workers, including speeding, substance abuse, trafficking, mischief, and violence,” the report continued.
View the EAO response letter on council’s agenda from Oct. 3.
