A meeting at the Sicamous Legion hall gave community members a chance to voice concerns about a proposed rock-quarrying operation in the Old Town Bay area.
The meeting, on Aug. 16, was hosted by Murray Hillson, the proponent of an application to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources requesting permission to remove and sell rock from his 18-acre property located on Old Town Road. The plan Hillson provided meeting attendees shows a haul road running up the hillside to a point at 420 metres of elevation, with benches to be blasted and cut from the hillside above it.
Rick Adams, a senior permitting inspector with the ministry, attended the meeting to field questions from the public.
At the meeting, Hillson said quarrying the rock from the property is a means to an end as his end goal is the creation of a safe road and building lot which he says will have a million-dollar view. Hillson told the approximately 30 assembled members of the public that in order to create the building lot he needs to remove rock from the hillside above it and take it off site.
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Hillson said selling the rock is essential to funding its removal from the property.
When asked about timeline, Hillson said he hopes to have the rock removed and be left with a salable building site as soon as possible. He said if development in Old Town Bay takes off he could have the quarrying complete in as little as a year.
Hillson said he sees the quarry as a net positive for Sicamous because it could act as an inexpensive source of aggregate and rip rap for projects in the district. He added that the flat benches created by the quarry will stop natural rockfall both onto the building site he hopes to sell and onto other properties downhill from it.
Sicamous District Coun. Malcolm Makayev, in attendance at the meeting, noted that estimates from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure indicate that the Bruhn Bridge project could result in as much as 200,000 cubic metres of rock flooding the local market and possibly making Hillson’s rock difficult to sell.
Bryant Laboret, who owns a property on Old Town Road, said a rock quarry cut into the hill will be an eyesore for the district.
Hillson replied that everything will be replanted once quarrying is complete as required by the ministry, leaving the whole hillside green again. He added that the ministry is holding approximately $10,000 of his money to cover remediation work at the site.
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“My place is going to be worth less and lots of other people’s properties are going to be worth less,” said David Cornish, another Old Town Road resident.
Other meeting attendees raised concerns about noise and dust from operations at the quarry. Both Adams and Hillson mentioned mitigating measures such as screening a rock crusher with a berm to reduce noise and spraying water on the haul road up to the quarry to reduce dust.
They also said that operations would be confined to weekdays and could be restricted during the tourist season.
Of particular concern for the owners of nearby properties was noise from drilling the holes required for blasting.
Hillson said he works with a blasting contractor experienced at working in populated areas and the scope of the drilling for each individual blast would be limited.
“The blast size that he would be doing, he would be done (drilling) in four hours, six maximum.”
Coun. Jeff Mallmes, who also attended the meeting, brought up another housing project which was attempted near Sicamous where lots of drilling and blasting was required in order to make usable building sites; he said the developer went bankrupt under the costs of blasting and running services to the site.
Adams said while he understands the concerns from the public, ministry permitting inspectors are only allowed to consider a set of technical criteria within the scope of the Mines Act in deciding on a permit.
He said his decisions are open to judicial review and provided an example where an inspector strayed from his criteria in the face of public outcry; that decision was overturned in court.
Towards the end of the meeting Mayor Terry Rysz rose from his chair to speak.
“We as a council have some serious concerns in regards to what you’re trying to accomplish here. There is a lot of room here in British Columbia to have rock quarries all over the bloody place, it doesn’t have to be in the middle of our community,” he said.
Rysz said there are two quarries nearby already and he doesn’t see another being added as something that is in the district’s best interest. He added he does understand the appeal of a site for a home with a view of the Eagle Valley and Mara and Shuswap lakes.
“My end result isn’t to build a quarry. My quarry application is to build and improve my building lot. That’s my process. I don’t see it as building a rock quarry and I’m sad that you guys do,” Hillson replied.
“A win-win for everybody is what I’ve always seen this as.”
Hillson repeated that if development in Old Town Bay goes through, a nearby supply of rock will be a huge asset for Sicamous.
“Your intentions are good, but we have to consider everybody else that surrounds you. That’s the big concern,” Rysz said.
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