BIV MAGAZINE
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BIV MAGAZINE: THE SUSTAINABILITY ISSUE 2020 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER
DUEL OVER WETLANDS
Environmental professionals, hired by real estate developers, find their findings challenged by a new wave of city hall planners FRANK O’BRIEN
T
he preservation of wetlands is a key issue affecting B.C.’s biggest industry: real estate, which accounted for 18% of provincial gross domestic product last year, compared with a 5.6% contribution from the province’s once-dominant resource sector, according to Statistics Canada.
All substantial real estate projects in B.C. are subject to an environmental audit conducted by qualified environmental professionals (QEPs), scientists all, before a development permit is issued by city hall. But QEPs and developers say that the expensive, extensive – and mandatory – environmental studies are often overturned by a new breed of younger and more environmentally concerned city hall planners, which can result in huge real estate losses. This is frustrating but also understandable, says biologist Harm Gross, president of Next Environmental Inc. of Burnaby and a QEP who has been conducting environmental studies for years. Gross notes that B.C.’s Contaminated Sites Regulation now covers more than 10,000 pages in scores of volumes, and there are 38 other bits of provincial and federal legislation that relate to wetland conservation. This includes B.C.’s Water Sustainability Act, which was introduced in 2016 and has been continually modified ever since, with the latest amendments made in December of 2019. Other wetlands regulations include the Agricultural Land Commission Act, the Transportation Act and the federal Fisheries Act. The two-decades old federal government’s No Net Loss Policy can also apply to the protection of certain fish, migratory birds and federally listed species at risk. “It’s easy to see that there is a lot of legalese to draw on when a municipal authority argues the QEP is wrong,” Gross says.
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Yet, despite all the legislation meant to contain it, the loss of B.C. wetlands has been unremitting, according to the Wetland Stewardship Partnership (WSP), whose members include the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the BC Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and the Union of B.C. Municipalities. “Wetlands cover almost 7% of B.C.’s land area, but are being destroyed and damaged at an alarming rate,” according to the WSP. The partnership claims that losses include 70% of the original wetlands in the Fraser River Delta, 70% of wetlands in the Victoria region and 85% of natural wetlands in the South Okanagan. “Today the province is losing wetlands primarily to draining and filling for new [residential] subdivisions and industrial development,” according to the WSP. The issue is further complicated due to the modern complexity and scale of mixed-use development, much of which is being done from sites that require rezoning, such as from farming to industrial, or industrial to residential, Gross adds. For real estate developers, the stakes are enormous. A civic ruling that a drainage ditch is actually a potential fish-bearing stream can carve a meandering 60-metre wide no-go zone through the centre of an acreage, making it impossible to develop. Both developers and QEPs say that a younger generation of city planners are much more zealous when it comes to environmental interpretations than those they replaced.
2020-06-23 2:37 PM
