Outrageous directors refused to look at new information
The rezoning application for the Crown leases related to the Westcan Terminal in the centre of the Cowichan Estuary in favour of metal manufacturing industry was on the agenda of last week’s regular CVRD board meeting. It was disturbing to listen to the emotional plea of one of the directors pushing for the rezoning approval in spite of the majority of Cowichan Bay (Area D) residents opposing increased industry in the estuary.
This also in spite of the well researched and articulated arguments against re-zoning by a couple of voting directors. The CVRD’s staff report on the rezoning offered four options. The final vote of the nine directors was in favour of a third reading instead of receiving and reviewing new information (the facts that were received previously and mysteriously “lost” by CVRD) as offered by options two and three that may have better informed the final still pending decision. Option four offered to quash the application at this stage. It is simply outrageous that the majority of the directors refuse to even look at the information that has surfaced.
Instead of hiding behind a highly controversial and unfounded “no-objection” letter by the chair of the Cowichan Environmental Management Committee it is now the responsibility of our elected officials to make the right decision which only could be to quash the application.
In this era of children trying to preserve their future and overwhelming scientific evidence, the rezoning approval would be a profound ecological crime by opening the door to any manufacturing industry to settle in the highly sensitive estuary flagged by its management plan for conservation.
Jennifer Lawson
Duncan