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Richmond’s animal shelter is getting into the Halloween spirit to raise money, vital to save thousands of unwanted, abandoned and injured creatures.
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GORD GOBLE SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Snow geese have returned to Richmond this season, poised to take over fields, parks and other open spaces of land. Above and right, they sit and then take flight from a farm at the end of Gilbert Road, south of Steveston Highway.
Farm neighbours raise concerns about more dumping Flooding in spring sets back farmers’ growing time by three months, according to worried local landowners BY PHILIP RAPHAEL
praphael@richmond-news.com
Long-time Westminster Highway farmers George Fong and Fred VanDyk are expecting a wet spring. The prediction, they feel, is pretty iron-clad, not because they have checked the venerable Farmer’s Almanac or Environment Canada for weather projections. All they have to do is look at what their neighbour has done to raise the level of their property with what they claim is demolition debris and ground up asphalt — materials prohibited from being dumped on farmland. The change in elevation — a good
four to five feet in some places — causes flooding on Fong and VanDyk’s properties just east of No. 6 Road, something that puts Fong back about three months of growing time in spring. “That’s worth about $10,000 to me,” said Fong who grows Chinese greens on the five-acre plot he has farmed since 1976. Moreover, the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) ordered a work stoppage on the land in April 2012 because the material dumped was deemed prohibitive. Fong and VanDyk believe that order is being ignored. On the other side of the raised property, VanDyk, 87, has long-since retired from farming, but has other
farmers raise and cut hay crops on his land. However, with the added moisture — run-off from his neighbour — that’s getting harder to do. “Instead of grass back there I am growing bullrushes,” said VanDyk who used to own the adjacent land but sold it when he retired. Since then, it has changed hands three times and is now listed as belonging to Guvinder Singh Aujla. Valvir Aujla told the Richmond News in a telephone interview his son, Guvinder, plans to build a 17,000square-foot home on the land and the work being done was in preparation for that project. see Aujla page 4
PHILIP RAPHAEL/RICHMOND NEWS
Work on distributing fill around the five-acre farmland property at 14160 Westminster Hwy. continued Wednesday (Oct. 16) despite a stop work order from the Agricutural Land Commission.
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