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CVRD declines closer ties to soil dump site

The CVRD has decided not to participate with the Ministry of Environment in a one-year water-quality monitoring program

ROBERT BARRON CITIZEN

The Cowichan Valley Regional District has decided not to participate with the Ministry of Environment in a one-year water-quality monitoring program for the controversial contaminated soil site on Stebbings Road.

The district has also declined an invitation from South Island Resource Management, operator of South Island Aggregates’ landfill on Stebbings Road, to participate as a member of an advisory committee that would review the operator’s annual report card.

Both decisions were made before a B.C. Supreme Court ruling Monday that upheld the CVRD’s contention that the contaminated soil dump site contravenes their bylaws.

The committee would then make non-binding recommendations to staff from the Ministry of Environment in relation to monitoring, sampling and reporting at the facility in accordance with the site’s environmental permit.

Jon Lefebure, chairman of the CVRD, said the board decided not to take part in the MOE’s quality monitoring program because the directors felt that it’s the ministry’s “sole responsibility” to ensure adequate water quality monitoring that is associated with that the ministry permits.

“We felt that once we got involved in this project as part of this program, we’d then be a part of the project,” he said.

“But the fact is, we’ve never supported any of this. We also felt that the monitoring program should be more than a year because the impacts to the water in that area would be impacted for more than a year. We want better monitoring programs than this.”

Lefebure said the invitation to participate in the company’s advisory committee was declined because of the district’s legal proceedings to enforce the CVRD’s zoning of the property on the basis that the landfill is not a permitted use for the site. “If we became part of that committee, then, again, we’d be part of the project, and we didn’t think that would be appropriate,” he said.