A regional district committee is recommending that a controversial re-zoning application from a metal recycler near the Nanaimo Airport proceed, pending further environmental assessment and planning.
The Cowichan Valley Regional District’s electoral area services committee debated a list of staff recommendations related to OCP amendment and re-zoning applications from Radius Recycling, formerly known as Schnitzer Steel. At the committee meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 6, area directors debated the recommendations, which will now be discussed at a board meeting later this month.
Among the requirements for the re-zoning, Radius Recycling will be given 120 days to update an environmental management plan that will address the protection of the Cassidy aquifer, create a stormwater management plan, and complete an environmental impact assessment and a fire protection report.
READ MORE: Regional district says steel recycler isn’t negatively impacting Cassidy aquifer
The company will also be required to establish an area on the property for after-hours scrap metal drop-offs due to concerns over people leaving their recyclables outside the front gate of the property overnight. Jack Sheppard, a Radius regional director, said the company is proposing to remove the drop-off area and put security in place in the interim because “we know that it looks pretty bad, and we don’t like it either.”
Nures Kara, senior environmental manager at Radius, said the business is comfortable with most of the recommendations, but said a 15-metre setback and an 8m landscape buffer with adjacent agricultural land will “significantly impact our ability to operate.”
READ MORE: Public will have a say on rezoning of controversial scrap-metal business near Nanaimo airport
After the planning coordinator of the community planning division and the applicants took questions from area directors, Ben Maartman, director for North Oyster-Diamond, moved to deny the application.
“Protection of a highly vulnerable aquifer which is ‘susceptible to surface contamination and having high transmissivity which can allow for the rapid transport of potential contaminants’ is critical to my community and to everybody in the Cowichan Valley,” said Maartman, partially quoting a staff report. “Water is one of our most precious commodities, and when I think through everything I’ve read and re-read, and everything that you’ve asked and I’ve listened to, I keep coming back to what is the long-term way of looking after this aquifer, and it is about getting the zoning right.”
Shawnigan Lake director Sierra Acton, Saltair-Gulf Islands director Jesse McClinton, and Cowichan Bay director Hilary Abbott said they disagreed with denying the application, suggesting the requirements set out are a good first step toward protecting the aquifer rather than “waiting for the business to go away, whenever that might be,” as McClinton put it.
Maartman said the requirements that were proposed are mitigations, but not long-term protection for the aquifer as the business will be able to continue indefinitely.
Mike Wilson, director for Cobble Hill, Kate Segall, director for Mill Bay-Malahat, Alison Nicholson, director for Cowichan Station, and Maartman voted to deny the application and Abbott, McClinton, Acton, and Ian Morrison, director of Cowichan Lake South, voted against the denial, defeating the motion on a tie vote.
Directors amended the resolution twice, adding requirements for the company to monitor several wells every six months rather than 12, and for the results of the water monitoring to be made public.
Maartman said he “felt really uncomfortable moving this forward,” after the final resolution was read aloud, and he motioned to refer the resolution to the next meeting, which was defeated with Wilson, Abbott, McClinton and Morrison opposing deferral.
I’m very wary of coming up with last-minute solutions to what is a very thoughtfully well-put-together staff report,” said Morrison. “This isn’t the end, it’s kind of a beginning, and I think we should get to a vote on the resolution and that will give staff direction as to how to move forward.”
The recommendation was eventually passed with Maartman, Nicholson, and Segall opposed, and will be brought forward at a regular board meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 13.
bailey.seymour@nanaimobulletin.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter