The advertised public meeting on the Southlands took place last Thursday. I was out of town so I asked a few people that attended what they thought. Their reaction could be summarized:
. Heavy on the Delta process for approval ("Delta staff will provide an overview of the application"), but very light on what the outcomes would be (the sketches of the housing were shown with Century Group in attendance).
. No real comment from Delta planners as to the implications for the lifestyle of residents in Tsawwassen.
. Fuzzy responses on traffic - only Century's data was shown and no implications for cumulative effect from TFN retail, etc.
. Delta staff did not write down questions to which they could not answer.
. Very little about what will happen to 80 per cent of property.
. A full Century team was present and they "intimidated" some that wanted to, but feared, asking questions.
. The open meeting was a briefing, where questions from the floor had to wait until people were able to approach Delta staff one by one. So no town hall-style of meeting.
Some said it was not a Delta information meeting as the substance of what will happen was solely that of the glossy words of the proponent. No commentary on impact by staff.
In teasing out what is really going on, the staff did release (with last-minute revisions) a report looking at what will be needed for flood proofing. To bring the reader up to date, the land is at sea level and under emerging B.C. guidelines any housing must be built on fill to raise the land. All of this is due to forecasted sea level rise over the next 50 to 100 years in Delta.
To summarize hundreds of pages of reports, either a dike must be built around Boundary Bay, which has been resisted by many homeowners, or a 15-foot dike must be built around the housing being proposed.
If just around the new houses, the consultant indicates 142,000 truckloads of fill are needed.
Allowing for return trips, we are looking at 300,000 trucks up and down 56th Street! No comment from staff as to whether the street can handle this. Still feel safe crossing the street?
I have been a proponent of farming on farmland for decades and do not change now in the light of this proposal. What's wrong with keeping all 540 acres for farming?
Just because someone bought the land does not change its value or purpose.
Removing good farmland for housing is unnecessary and our grandchildren will admonish us when they realize what we have been doing. There is enough land already within the Tsawwassen boundaries to accommodate the extra housing that is needed and will be demanded over time.
We live on one-fifth of an acre, large enough for a septic field.
Now houses are being built on one-third of the land and do quite well.
The town centre contains 33 acres net of roads, or if you wish, about 1.4 million square feet. Most of the land is now zoned to allow six storeys, which translates to eight million square feet of retail, commercial, institutional, parking and residential. One thousand homes, at 1,000-square-feet per home, would take up only one million of that total.
So I say concentrate housing in the existing town centre and leave the farmland for farming.
