Saturday, February 15, 2014

This Day In Snookland....Park Today, Gone Tomorrow?

SometimesABoundaryIs
Something(Way)LessVille


The VSun's Larry Pynn has the story. Here's his lede:

Companies planning to build projects such as pipelines and transmission lines stand to receive permits to conduct exploratory research in B.C. parks, according to proposed new legislation introduced Thursday.

Bill 4, the Park Amendment Act, 2014, would allow investigative-use permits to be issued for studies, including for vegetation sampling, fish surveys and low-impact geotechnical studies. Based on the results of the studies, companies would then have to apply for a boundary adjustment if they wanted to proceed with a project through a park...



Now.

Lest you think the flack-hackery has not lined it's (one) duck(s) in a row to muddy all media sound-bite waters, Park-Slayer-In-Chief  Mary Polak was ready with this:

...(BC Liberal Government Environment Minister) Mary Polak noted that not all permit applications will be from companies seeking industrial projects.

The Kitselas First Nation near Terrace is seeking an amendment to 269-hectare Kleanza Creek Provincial Park to allow for access to drinking water. Access roads are another potential rationale for a park boundary amendment.

She noted that allowing a small land removal from a park might result in less environmental damage than if a company had to seek an alternative route...



Except, as the Sun's Mr. Pynn was quick to note:

...The Vancouver Sun reported last December that the Ministry of Environment is anticipating applications for boundary adjustments to at least 35 parks and other protected areas to accommodate industrial pipelines, transmission lines and resource roads.

The proposed boundary adjustments — which would amount to new or enlarged industrial corridors slicing through protected areas — were contained within a four-page ministry document dated May 17, 2013 and released through a freedom-of-information request.

According to the document, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Alberta to Burnaby could potentially require boundary adjustments to 10 provincial parks, ranging in size from 8.5-hectare F.H. Barber and 32-hectare Bridal Veil Falls, both between Chilliwack and Hope, to large protected areas such as 615-hectare Jackman Flats near Valemount and 15,000-hectare Lac du Bois Grasslands near Kamloops...



Hmmmm....


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Do you see the reverse peristaltic manoeuver that Mr. Pynn just executed...Perhaps a few of the puffed-up pro-punditry round 'here who have been lulled into swallowing flack hackery/think tank codswallop whole should take note of how it can (and should) be done.
And, just for the record (and because I have a memory and I refuse to not use it)...It's not like the BC Liberals have not cut up a park to help fill the pockets of the cronies with treasure more valuable than bitcoin before...Right?

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the dusty memory files: in the Golden Age of Davey, Dad was in support of Dave's trial balloon thing in which he pondered putting low cost housing on the endowment lands.

Well, Dad and I had a back and forth, and in the end Dad agreed with my argument: that rich and poor alike enjoy the rare sanctuary of that space, not to mention its wild inhabitants.

In retrospect, no one could have predicted that my beloved sleepyish town on the sea would have been Mulroneyized into the frenetic feeding ground for the money changers, not even the prescient, and almost infallible Davey B.

Well, now you've got me started RossK. Will the dishes ever wash themselves and other little miracles?...
SH



Anonymous said...

This:

"We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they too, are holy places."

SH

Edward Abbey quoted in: Wilderness Ethics: Preserving the Spirit of Wildness. Laura and Guy Waterman

Anonymous said...

A good Gord-- a largely unsung hero in need of a song:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Gordon_McAdams



scotty on denman said...

Socreds reacted to tree-huggers in the late 80s ("the war in the woods", Clayoquot, Meares, etc.,...) with a radical plan to virtually privatize parks, open them up for investment---so different than the neo-rightist lot we got now; The moribund Socreds (who would soon after be swept away by the NDP who enacted major resource policy changes, including the doubling of parks and protected areas) got too knee-jerk with this hackneyed, retaliatory parks plan, heavy on ideology but likely to immediately cripple an established industry that generated several hundreds of millions of dollars annually. But they were still old-school, with quaint notions of actually tendering out park service concessions; more evolved neo-rightists like the BC Liberals take care to first bankrupt public institutions they intend to privatize, colluding with insiders to assist (as in IPPs parasitizing BC Hydro) and negotiate the inside track to fire sale prices with special friends (see BC Rail).

BC Parks used to be world class; now they're in a state of neglect, campsites gone, trails closed, parking meters in the parking lot, gouging camping fees, employees laid off for over a decade and a lost reputation internationally that will take years to reverse. It's almost as if the BC Liberals are intentionally trying to 'bankrupt' the parks system.

Same goin' on with whatever they call the super-ministry these days. It's the old razzle dazzle---forest inventory, for example, hasn't been done for a decade, making management more and more difficult---and stumpage more difficult to figure out.

There's only one reason in my mind why this government of self-proclaimed free enterprise "businessmen", takes public institutions that used to provide surpluses and turns them into financial basket cases.