The Cariboo Regional District (CRD) has not yet heard if the B.C. Liberal government will allow the board further consultations on the upcoming Natural Resource Road Act (NRRA).
Resource roads are typically one- or two-lane gravel roads built for industrial purposes to access natural resources in remote areas.
The act will cover all these roads, including BC Forest Service [BCFS] logging roads, petroleum development roads, mineral exploration roads, Land Act roads and special-use-permit roads.
The first phase of public consultations ended Dec. 15, 2011, but while the news release was issued on Oct. 17, Area L Director Bruce Rattray says the board found out about it less than two weeks before the deadline.
“Most of us heard there was a public consultation when we got the agenda for the board meeting in December. The due date for comments was the following week.”
Rattray adds it is a “complicated issue with enough competing interests” that the board needed to be better informed before providing feedback.
The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRO) states there was “ample” time provided for initial input, explaining the Dec. 15 deadline marked the end of only the first phase of consultations.
The act recently moved into its second phase for the analysis of the outstanding policy issues and options for resolving them, to guide the drafting of legislation this fall.
This doesn’t mean the CRD directors can’t still “put our two bits in,” Rattray says.
Typically, the province doesn’t want the public travelling on non-maintained back roads, he says, adding that once they’re closed to the public, the roads are signed as closed and physically blocked to prevent vehicular travel.
“[The resource companies] also foot the bill for most of the costs on those roads, and once they are done with them, they like to get out from under that cost, which means they want to close down the road.”
The public uses a lot of these roads quite a bit, Rattray notes, which is partly why there is pressure to continue the road maintenance.
People tend to treat them as public roads, and with many private properties using resource roads for access to homes, cabins, and even resorts, he notes “cutting them off is even a bigger deal.”
On the other hand, he notes some of these roads provide access into the habitat of endangered species, such as mountain caribou, as well as potentially sensitive watersheds.
“It’s not an easy issue to figure out the right answer on.”
To his understanding of the current rules, Rattray says the maintenance obligations vary depending on the type of road and the specific legislation that applies to it.
“[In] this new act … they’re trying to put it all under one piece of legislation, whereas now, forestry is different than mining, which is different than the oil and gas, and so they all have different rules.”
The discussion paper and a summary document of feedback from the public input phase are available online at www.for.gov.bc.ca/mof/nrra/.
More recently, the MFLNRO has now introduced legislation to limit liability on resource roads.
Rattray says his initial observation is the proposed change to the Occupiers Liability Act appears to be getting ahead of the NRRA project still in the legislation development stage.
It appears the proposed changes would reduce the liability for third parties, making it less risky and less costly for them to take on responsibility for a resource road, he notes.
“However, road maintenance is still a significant cost, so it will still be a challenge to find a third party to step forward.”
