This before-and-after photo shows how much fill has been dumped on some properties.
Image Credit: Submitted/Ellison Matters
March 13, 2023 - 6:00 AM
Residents of the rural Ellison area near Kelowna’s airport are raising a stink about hundreds of dump trucks a day hauling dirt into the hillsides above the city.
It’s not a new thing in the Central Okanagan but has been accelerated by the rapid pace of new construction in recent years, especially the massive highrises where tonnes of soil are excavated.
There are 19 known dumping sites in Ellison and eight in other rural areas in the Central Okanagan.
“In my opinion, it’s been going on for 15 years,” Todd Cashin, director of community services for the regional district, told iNFOnews.ca. “It’s just now that there is a group of people who care enough to make enough noise about it.”
This shows the location of unregulated dumping sites in the Central Okanagan.
Image Credit: Submitted/Regional District of Central Okanagan
He will be going to the regional district board on March 16 to outline options to address the issue but, even if the board says to make this a priority, it will be the fall at the very earliest before regulations can be put in place.
“It has escalated over the last three years,” one Ellison resident told iNFOnews.ca. “It really ramped up last year when we had 100 to 150 dump truck with pups going up the hill every day.”
His concern is that there is no regulation on where or how the material is being dumped.
There are seasonal creeks in the area that have no-build zones around them and there are regulations about building on steep slopes.
But the dumping is often filling up steep gullies and blocking off water flows.
In other areas the material is piled high beside roadways then washes down in the spring.
This before-and-after photos shows a football-field sized area that has been filled in.
Image Credit: Submitted/Ellison Matters
Some parcels are 20 acres in size so neighbours can’t see where the soil is being dumped.
Given the huge volume of dump trucks crawling up steep roads or roaring at excessive speeds back down, residents have stopped riding their horses and walking their dogs. Even cyclists who used to train in the area have stopped coming, he said.
The man did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation from neighbours who are being paid $30 to $60 per load to allow the dirt to be dumped on their land, he said.
“I’m not trying to stop the fill from coming in,” he said. “I just want to make sure people are doing it right. All I’m looking for is for these guys to be responsible.”
One resident who is willing to be named is Debbie Chapman who collected 65 signatures on a Change.org petition that’s gone to the regional district asking it to bring in regulations.
“The lack of regulation surrounding soil placement has had a significant impact on the Ellison community, putting safety at risk,” she wrote in the petition. “Landowners are incentivized to allow the placement of contaminated and untested soil, resulting in excessive dump truck traffic that has disrupted the peace, safety, and well-being of the community.”
More Ellison residents would likely have signed but feared being identified by neighbours who welcome the soil on their land, Chapman said.
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She grew up in Ellison and her parents have owned land there since 1969.
They were upset by an application to dump 209,000 cubic metres of soil on 13 acres of land near their agricultural property.
Plans were to pile it up to 12 metres deep in order to create flat land for farming.
Since that parcel is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, there are some regulations on soil dumping there. The regional district board decided, in December, not to forward the application to the provincial agricultural land commission so, for now, it has been stopped.
But that application, and the opposition from Ellison residents, did get the board to ask Cashin to come back with ideas on how to deal with the issue.
In his mind, an Ellison-specific solution would just push the dumping elsewhere.
“We have to come up with a bit of a regional strategy,” Cashin said. “We have to start to treat the soil as a resource.”
In the past, the Glenmore landfill accepted dirt from construction sites but it now has a three-year stockpile.
“The landfill is built with very expensive liner and gas systems to manage our municipal solid waste for as long as we can, cost effectively and environmentally effectively,” Kevin Van Vliet, Kelowna’s utility services manager, told iNFOnews.ca. “We don’t want to fill our landfill with dirt that just came out of a hole downtown. That’s not in the best interests of our taxpayers in the region for the long term.”
He uses good quality soil that’s suitable for road building within the landfill. The garbage is placed in cells with layers of dirt to prevent the spread of fire but there is way more dirt being dug up throughout the region than can be handled at the landfill.
So where is all this excavated material going to go?
Some good quality material can be used to level land and even for agricultural uses but some may have to be taken to cover old gravel pits or even hauled to the Brenda Mine site above Peachland, Cashin suggested.
The reality is, the pace of construction in the region is not slowing so the need to properly dispose of excavation material is just going to grow.
The sad reality is, places like Ellison may have to put up with hundreds of daily dump truck trips for some time to come.
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