An open letter to
Terrace City Council:
Having just read the article in The Terrace Standard re: some new boat launch at Ferry Island, I find it interesting the article says they contacted home owners for their input on this. Who have they asked, someone on Kalum Lake Road?
I live across the side channel of the Skeena River and Ferry Island. I have had the loss of 15 feet-plus of my land behind my house from the erosion from the river caused by the rocks the city and BC government placed there in 2007 during the flood.
I have had the city engineers, mayor and MLA representative look at this damage. I was assured by the city foreman at the time in 2007 they would monitor any damage caused by this rock wall from back eddy action at the end of it where my property stops.
Nothing has happened in four years. Now I read some idiot has come up with the hair-brain idea of a boat launch behind my house.
It’s a boat launch fisherman will be using at 4 a.m. till midnight. How would you like a 4- wheel track behind your house on the bench? How about a stock car track around Ferry Island? Sounds great to me!
We have a quiet park now. You can’t even have a chainsaw over there to carve a tree, but no problem with 100 river boats with engines that roar at idle every morning before day break.
I put up with the wild duck race once a year that the Rotary club sponsors which causes terrible boat wakes behind my place and more erosion but that is once a year and for a good cause so we keep shut up about it.
This I will not be quiet about and maybe I should start raising hell about the duck race, too.
The NDP lost an election for ferries that caused too big a wake and erosion on the shore but here we run boats flat out in a narrow channel with no regard for quiet, no regard for land erosion no regard for the pollution they cause.
If we can find money to rip rap and install a boat launch in a park why can’t I get rock for land I pay tax money on? Why destroy the one partially quiet place in the city with the racket of boat motors?
I don’t care if you have to wait 3 hours to put your toy in the river at Fisherman Park. You are not getting away with this without a big fight. I was told the land behind my house wasn’t on city property but here we have the city putting in a boat ramp on the other side of the river which I guess is now magically their land?
One side is, other side where taxpayers like me live, isn’t!
Give me a break! If this gets approved I will be pursuing what legal action I can take of no representation and total disregard for a taxpayer of the city. I am not going away on this issue and hereby give warning to the city council if they don’t cancel this idea pronto. If you want to see action, just try me.
Doug Gent,
Terrace, BC
