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Dumping in the Shawnigan Watershed
Bruce Fraser, Area Director
May 29, 2012

The Soil Dumping Situation
The provincial government maintains jurisdiction over movement of contaminated soil because it believes that it is in the wider public interest to ensure that contaminated sites can be rehabilitated without hindrance. Along with this overriding authority comes the responsibility to see that the areas that receive such materials are not ending up themselves contaminated and that transferred materials end up in appropriately managed locations. Movement of contaminated material is supposed to be regulated effectively by the Ministry of Environment, but in recent years the capacity of that ministry has been reduced, so that monitoring of soil movement and its effect on receiving sites, particularly those in Shawnigan, has been minimal. There may be a well thought out set of rules, but implementation of the rules has proved to be more difficult in times of diminishing resources. The importance of this to Shawnigan residents is accentuated by the increasing truck traffic entering the watershed to dump large quantities of soil of publicly unknown source and condition.

If contaminated material were to be dumped where soil or leachates could pollute a fish-bearing stream, the habitat protection provisions of the Federal Fisheries Act could be brought to bear for prevention or remediation. With the current Federal Government’s reduction in habitat provisions under revised fisheries legislation, capacity limitations experienced by the provincial environment authority may well be matched by those at the federal level. In both cases this amounts to retention of jurisdiction but lessening of attention to the accompanying responsibility. For communities this means either frustration where it appears that nothing can be done or that the environmental responsibility is downloaded to local taxpayers. Our status as an unincorporated electoral area within the Cowichan Valley Regional District has contributed to us being both unaware and ineffective in controlling the indiscriminate dumping of soil that is potentially or actually contaminated. What would not be countenanced for a minute in the Victoria watershed, has received scant provincial attention for the Shawnigan watershed, despite the fact that it, too, is a public water source. This now needs to change.

For Shawnigan, increased trucking of large quantities of soil into the basin has led to numerous private land sites where soils have been dumped to suit the convenience of developers in the Greater Victoria region, among other Vancouver Island sources. Many appear to be unregulated, but some are aggregate mines under the regulatory management of the Ministry of Mines, where contaminated soils could potentially be used in permitted mine reclamation. This is the case with the recent application put forward by South Island Aggregates for their quarry site on Stebbings Road. Their proposal is to create an advanced engineering model for site reclamation that they claim could safely absorb some component of contaminated soil from outside locations. The SIA application is before the Ministry of Environment, presently being adjudicated by staff in the Nanaimo office of the Ministry, and subject to a mandatory period of public consultation. Regulations require that all public input to the project be recorded and the input with the company’s response to that input be provided to the Ministry. Given the rising concern among Shawnigan residents, this project is controversial and demands careful attention to the substance of what is being planned. I would like to see us scrutinize the merits and risks of their proposal thoroughly so that we are well informed as to what is being planned and can speak knowledgeably to the considerations that the Ministry of Environment will use as they decide whether to approve the project, have it modified or rejected.

The Current CVRD Approach
The Regional District is attempting to work collaboratively with the Ministry of Environment. It is a sincere effort to bridge the jurisdiction/responsibility gap that has prevented the CVRD from making headway over the last 12 years. There needs to be an enhanced effort on the part of the Ministry to ensure monitoring and regulatory diligence along with an enhanced effort by the Regional District to put the most effective land use zoning in place. Previous CVRD attempts to put effective zoning in place to restrict contaminated soil dumping in the region have been set aside by the provincial government. In our recent meeting in Victoria, the Minister of Environment gave our CVRD delegation positive assurances that new efforts would be made by his ministry, including increased sampling of incoming material, testing of existing sites and examination of water quality in Shawnigan Creek. He also agreed to work with the CVRD on the integration of provincial contaminated sites regulation and the land use zoning by-laws of the Regional District. These assurances were given because the CVRD took a positive and collaborative approach on behalf of its communities rather than resorting only to criticism.

The first meeting between the Ministry and the CVRD took place on May 23rd at the regular meeting of the Regional Services Committee. The Ministry representative outlined the general procedures for dealing with movement of contaminated soils but was not yet able to specify when and how the collaboration process was to proceed, when and how soil testing and water monitoring were actually to be accomplished or exactly how and by whom the South Island Aggregates application is being managed and the nature of the public consultation process they are expected to employ. As Area Director, along with my Board colleagues, I will be vigorously and immediately seeking answers to these questions because of the urgency of public concerns of Shawnigan residents for the security of their water supply. In the meantime, in order to safeguard the public interest, the Board will be monitoring SIA’s public process and the Ministry of Environment’s response to ensure that public concerns are fully acknowledged and factored into the decision making process. The CVRD wants to make sure that the collaborative arrangement with the Ministry of Environment is given a reasonable opportunity to work and that the promised testing to establish existing conditions takes place immediately, before decisions are made that could compromise the program agreed to by the Minister of Environment.
Role of the Shawnigan Watershed Roundtable
The Shawnigan Watershed Roundtable is also taking a collaborative approach to address the full range of issues that are now evident in the Shawnigan Basin. We have established the Roundtable to bring together all interested parties to seek positive management of our watershed. The problem of soil dumping was one of the key issues raised by residents at the “State of the Basin” workshop held by the Roundtable on March 31st, which helped to support the rekindling of CVRD action on this matter. The General Managers of the CVRD Planning and Engineering departments were among the 37 people from all parts of the watershed that attended the workshop. The minutes of this meeting are published on the Area Director’s web site.

The Shawnigan Watershed Roundtable has been designated by the Board of the CVRD as one of the official response organizations for review of the draft zoning by-law for the South Cowichan Official Community Plan. The by-law is one of the means by which Shawnigan residents can ensure that zoning reflects the watershed security needs that we all desire. The draft by-law is available on line at the CVRD web site and is also available from the Area Director, The Shawnigan Resident’s Association and the Shawnigan Advisory Planning Commission. Any group or individual wishing to examine the by-law and accompanying maps only need ask for an appointment with the Area Director.

Successful management or our watershed will take a great many residents and agencies working together to solve land and water problems, whether it is contaminated soil dumping in the headwaters, scattered upland subdivisions, excessive logging of watershed slopes, leakage of aging septic fields into the lake, summertime powerboat congestion or clearing of foreshore vegetation as a result of ecologically insensitive residential development. The Shawnigan Watershed is extensively influenced by existing human activity and governed by a fragmented set of environmental rules belonging to numerous federal, provincial and local government agencies. Coordination and collaboration is the only way that we can solve problems that are so complicated.

Of paramount importance, there also needs to be intense public scrutiny on the outcomes of these efforts at collaboration. It will take both extensive community effort and sustained vigilance to reverse the environmental impacts that have accumulated over many years. Shawnigan Watershed Watch pioneered the stewardship effort, the Shawnigan Residents Association is active and the Shawnigan Creek Protection Association has just entered the fray. If you want to contribute to this effort, please join your neighbours at the individual association meetings or the Watershed Roundtable and Director’s meetings where these issues are being addressed.

The next Director’s meeting is at 7pm on June 4th at the Shawnigan Lake Community Centre at which time the soil dumping issue and the South Cowichan draft zoning by-law will be discussed.