Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Smith Creek Friends
March 28, 2022 - 7:00 AM
Residents of one West Kelowna neighbourhood are soon going to have rock blasting and dump trucks moving through their neighbourhood.
If that’s a surprise to them, that’s because the City of West Kelowna is following provincial laws to the letter and decided it doesn’t have to inform residents of the large undertaking.
West Kelowna city council approved a development permit that allows a developer to blast a new road into a hillside near Smith Creek, but it is not just any road. The blasting will cut 30 metres into a south-facing slope and produce more than 100,000 cubic metres of debris. It includes an eight-metre-wide terrace cut half-way up to prevent rocks tumbling down onto the road.
The other side of the road will cut up to 15 metres into the hill, which will decrease the visibility of the scar that will be created on the hillside, city planning manager Brent Magnan explained to council.
Part of the project will require 4,000 dump truck trips to haul 40,000 cubic metres of rock off site. Residents are on their own to figure it out.
“The Development Services Department says that no variances were requested on this file, therefore notification was not needed per the Local Government Act,” Jason Luciw, spokesperson for the City of West Kelowna, confirmed in an email to iNFOnews.ca.
That means there haven't even been signs posted on the property to let neighbours know what's about to happen there.
No councillor raised any concerns about the public not being notified of the project, despite the fact that Coun. Stephen Johnston noted that “blasting is always a difficult scenario on any development.”
He, followed by other councillors, praised the developer for doing the blasting work before more houses are built and stressed the work is vital to connect West Kelowna neighbourhoods.
The project will see the removal of 110,000 cubic metres of material with about 70,000 cubic metres being moved to a flatter location on the development site, crushed and used to extend Smith Creek Road to eventually connect with a future Tallus Ridge Road-Cooper Ridge Drive connection.
Coun. Caron Zanon did raise concerns about truck traffic on roads down to Highway 97 that are already heavily used by dump trucks and not built to carry such weight. Staff will have further discussions with the developer to see if that hauling can be avoided or, at least, delayed.
The Smith Creek development is part of a Concept Development Plan approved in 2020 for about 900 housing units covering almost 150 hectares north of the Westbank downtown area.
As such, it went through a rezoning application and public hearings so there’s no legal requirement for council to notify the public about each development permit needed for the project. It’s only if a variance is requested that the public gets to be notified.
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This is a long-standing provision under the Local Government Act and was not changed last fall when the province ruled that some rezoning applications no longer have to go to public hearings.
Calls to the Smith Creek Neighbourhood Association were not returned.
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