by George Le Masurier | Nov 9, 2017
Photo: The new engineered landfill that will serve the entire north Island
THE next time you drag your trash bins to the curb, think about what happens next to that garbage.
If you have conscientiously reduced, recycled and reused, you will have sent just a small amount of waste to the Pigeon Lake dump, now known by the gentrified title, Comox Valley Waste Management Center. And chances are good that your trash bin contained mostly plastic packaging.
When it reaches the dump, workers will bury your trash, and everyone else’s, in a landfill and leave it to decompose over the next 1,000 years. During that time, in older landfills, it will leach toxic liquids into the soil and methane gas into the atmosphere.
Landfills are North America’s third largest source of methane, which is 25 times more detrimental to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Not long ago, the Comox Strathcona Waste Management board of directors (CSWM) thought they had so much landfill capacity that it didn’t seem urgent to explore more environmentally-friendly technologies for disposing of municipal garbage.
The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy (ENV) approved the CSWM Solid Waste Management Plan in 2013, and an amended plan in 2016 to permit construction of a new engineered landfill at Pigeon Lake that will contain toxic liquids and capture methane gas.
The new landfill is so big, the size of 11 CFL football fields, that it is projected to hold the entirety of the north Island region’s municipal waste for at least 20 years.
But what happens then, and do new technologies offer a better solution?
Director Rod Nichol
Those are the questions newly-elected Area B Director Rod Nichol started asking three years ago. Those questions led him to technologies that convert waste-to-energy (WTE).
Nichol’s efforts gained enough support on the CSWM board to formally explore the latest technologies that transform undiverted municipal solid wastes (MSW) into energy or recyclable materials. His goal was to reduce the volume of garbage buried in the new landfill and extend its usable life.
On Nov. 28, a special WTE committee, which Nichol chairs, will consider the recommendations of a consultant who has reviewed three different proposals to cope with the north Island’s garbage problem — Eco Waste Solutions, Sustane Technologies and WTT Technology.
It’s anticipated the technology review will answer several questions about waste-to-energy:
Do any of the WTE proposals provide sustainable and environment-friendly solutions? Will they reduce the cost of dumping? Will they undermine the progress of waste reduction programs? And will the provincial government even allow WTE when the north Island diversion rate is still well under 60 percent?
Waste to energy solutions
Two of the three proposals the CSWM board will consider appear to involve some form of burning waste to directly or indirectly produce energy or fuel.
While incineration is common in Europe, British Columbia has only one active WTE plant in Burnaby (built in 1988). And none of the applicant companies appear to have working models in Canada or the United States.
On its website, Eco Waste Solutions promotes burning undiverted residual waste in large incinerators to produce electricity. This would require a tall smokestack towering high above the Comox Valley.
Given that Island Health issued an air quality advisory for the City of Courtenay this week, and ongoing widespread concerns about the effect of wood stoves on people with certain medical conditions, it’s unlikely this proposal would garner much support.
Sustane Technologies’ website says their company has developed the technology to separate plastics from organic material, and to produce biomass fuel pellets and diesel fuel (from the plastics). It does not utilize incineration or any direct combustion.
There are other, less common, methods of turning waste to energy, such as gasification (which produces combustible gas) or pyrolysis (which produces combustible tar or bio-oil).
It’s harder to assess the third applicant, WTT Technology, from its website. The Netherlands company says it integrates mechanical and biological (composting and digestion) treatments in solutions tailor-made for each installation. It claims no harmful emissions, and does not mention incineration.
All three applicants claim their technologies can recover 90 percent of what the CSWM Center in Cumberland currently plans to bury in its new landfill. If true, that would mean the landfill could service the north Island 10 times longer than currently projected, perhaps for up to 200 years.
The technical reports submitted by the three companies and the consultant’s review will be made public a day before the CSWM’s Nov. 28 meeting.
WTE versus Zero Waste
Burning undiverted garbage (trash that can’t be recycled or reused) to generate electricity also produces emissions harmful to the atmosphere. And it makes no difference if the garbage is burned directly or converted into fuel that is burned later.
Buddy Boyd, a director of Zero Waste Canada, said the only real sustainable solution is a Zero Waste world, which he believes is possible without affecting our quality of life.
His group’s mission is “to help individuals, businesses, and governments transition to a circular economy, making the use of landfills, incinerators, and waste-to-energy plants obsolete.”
Boyd said the “so-called emerging technologies are unsustainable scams.”
“None of the proposals for the Comox Valley challenge the community to do better in living a zero waste lifestyle,” he said. “In fact, they do the opposite: They require a guaranteed supply of waste to fuel their operations and pay off the company’s capital costs.”
CSWM Director Charlie Cornfield, of Campbell River, said a zero waste world would be ideal, and to achieve it would require a massive global shift in manufacturing, packaging and education.
“We can’t change society overnight, so what do we do in the interim,” he said? “It’s better than we turn this garbage into fuel than to have it floating around like giant islands in the ocean.”
And, he called landfills a 19th century solution.
“We can’t keep throwing garbage into a hole,” he said. “Waste-to-energy is better, and will save taxpayers millions of dollars.”
Environment ministry policy
Responding to a query from Decafnation, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy sent the following statement via email:
“Current ministry policy supports the 5R pollution prevention hierarchy … whereby waste materials are managed at the highest possible level and waste-to-energy is not undertaken unless all of the higher level options have been considered.
“The hierarchy and current ministry legislation and guidance does not preclude any form of waste-to-energy or incineration but establishes criteria that must be met in order to meet higher levels of the hierarchy instead of disposal.”
Guidance documents for waste-to-energy can be found here.
The province prefers to let regional district determine the best strategies for disposal and managing municipal solid waste.
What’s happened so far
Besides the new landfill at Pigeon Lake, the Solid Waste Management Plan calls for environmentally-mandated closure of all other landfills on the north Island, including the Campbell River landfill; building transfer stations in those communities losing landfills; and, adding a methane burners and an organic composting facility.
The CSWM also asked Nichol’ committee to study waste-to-energy technologies.
CSWM Director Brenda Leigh, from the Oyster River area, says the last time the board looked at WTE in 2010, “we learned that the cost per tonne significantly exceeded the cost of landfilling and that we did not have the volume to make WTE economically viable.”
She noted that the WTE committee has probed other municipalities about contributing their undiverted garbage to a WTE stream.
“But as far as I am aware, this proposal hasn’t advanced beyond talking,” she said.
Nichol says he has spoken to elected officials in other communities, including Victoria. But he doesn’t anticipate volume being an issue as all three companies would scale their operations to the region and its projected population growth.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps told Decafnation, “Without knowing precisely what technology is being considered, I think Director Nicol’s approach to look for innovative solutions to use waste as a resource is commendable. In the 21st century we need to make every effort as local governments to create closed-loop systems and limit waste.”
What happens next
If the CSWM board wants to pursue construction of a WTE plant at Pigeon Lake, it would have to amend its Solid Waste Management Plan again and get a new approval from the B.C. government. That would mean either achieving a 70 percent diversion before approval, or convincing the province to bend on this criterion.
Then regional district staff would have to work out details and negotiate with the company selected to provide the service.
Nichol said he was told this process could take 18 months or longer, but he believes it could be completed more quickly.
How Canada and B.C. rank worldwide
Canadians generate more municipal waste than all other 16 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to the Conference Board of Canada.
We’re the worst performer, producing twice as much waste in 2008 as Japan, the best performer.
British Columbia does better at reducing, recycling and reusing than every province, except Nova Scotia. But we still generate 573 kg per capita every year of un-diverted garbage that must be buried in landfills.
And that’s a far greater amount of waste per person than the new provincial guidelines.
According to the environment ministry’s “A Guide to Solid Waste Management Planning,” which supports regional districts in developing goals and targets in their solid waste planning, there are two provincial targets for 2020/21:
1) Lower the municipal solid waste disposal rate to 350 kg per person per year; and,
2) Have 75 percent of BC’s population covered by an organic waste disposal restriction. The guide can be found here.
by George Le Masurier | Oct 25, 2017
For nearly three years, a group of rural Comox Valley citizens has warned the Courtenay-Comox Sewage Commission about the environmental and financial risks of building a sewage pump station on a small Croteau Beach lot.
They’ve spent their own money on independent hydrology and financial experts to support their concerns, and have pointed commissioners toward less expensive and more effective alternatives.
But the commission — primarily the Town of Comox delegates — has consistently turned a deaf ear.
However, all the commissioners heard the message contained in five separate reports on Oct. 24 that collectively validated most of the citizens’ concerns about the project. The message was clear: Beech Street is too expensive and poses too many risks.
So they quickly and unanimously supported a staff recommendation to shelve the Comox No. 2 pump station in favor of three new alternative solutions.
That left several Comox commissioners scrambling to explain why they’ve spent so many taxpayers dollars and staff time on a project they never thoroughly vetted before purchasing real estate, and how they neglected to undertake the studies recommended by their 2011 Sewage Master Plan.
Those studies have now been completed, including a lengthy report from Opus International Consultants that evaluates the 12-year-old plan to decommission the section of sewer pipe on Balmoral Beach, below the Willemar Bluffs. It was feared that wave action and other forces might cause it to fail and create an environmental crisis.
But a separate study by Northwest Hydraulic Consultants reports that the pipe is in better condition than previously thought.
So, with less urgency to remove the Balmoral Beach pipe, Opus has recommended the commission take another 12 months starting in January 2018 to analyze and investigate three better solutions than the ill-considered plan to build a new pump station on Beech Street.
Comox Valley Regional District staff will report back to the commission in January 2019 and make recommendations to restart the project.
The citizens left the Oct. 24 meeting feeling vindicated, but still frustrated by regional district policies that can deny residents affected by infrastructure projects the right to be represented at the decision-making table.
Four new options
Opus consultants have recommended removing the main Courtenay-Comox sewer pipe from intertidal zones due to multiple and significant environmental risks, and relocating it to an overland route — the inland side of Dyke Road — from the Courtenay No. 1 pump station through Comox enroute to the wastewater treatment plant on Brent Road.
They proposed four overland options.
Option 1 would utilize stronger pumps at the Courtenay No. 1 and Comox Jane Place pump stations to move sanitary flows up the Glacier View and Lazo Road hills before gravity takes over and draws sewage down to the Brent Road plant.
Option 2 is the sewage commission’s original plan to build a new pump station at Beech Street. But Opus says this option creates a single point of failure for the entire system, among multiple other concerns, including the highest ongoing operating costs.
The serious disadvantages with Option 2 are the reason Opus has recommended three less expensive and less problematic solutions. So it’s curious why this option was left on the table, other than for comparison purposes and, perhaps, for purely political reasons.
Option 3 also includes a new pump station in Comox, but at a lower elevation, such as the town’s Marina Park. But it also creates a single point of system failure.
Option 4 mirrors the first option, using stronger pumps to move sewage over Glacier View Hill, but would tunnel under Lazo Road Hill, rather than pump sewage over it to the Brent Road treatment plant.
However, the report doesn’t consider how the tunnel option might impact aquifers along the route, and the wells that tap into them, or how the tunneled pipe would be monitored for leaks and accessed for emergency repairs and maintenance.
Why not Beech Street?
Kris La Rose, the CVRD’s manager of sewerage and water operations, summarized the key findings of the five reports for sewage commissioners.
Estimated costs for the Beech Street pump station had jumped by about 50 percent to nearly $20 million. And it was already more expensive than the top options recommended by the CVRD’s Advisory Committee three years ago.
The Opus report included operating costs in its analysis, which citizens have maintained the commission should have considered all along, and that puts Beech Street costs far above all other options.
A complicated tie-in between the main sewer pipe in the foreshore and the new pipe to a Beech Street pump station could only be done by a few specialized and expensive technicians around the world. And short working times due to tidal action made the tie-in fraught with environmental risk.
The small size of the Beech Street property put restrictions on pump station design and construction, and made the CVRD’s guarantees about no odour, noise or vibration beyond the property lines seem questionable.
Opus also pointed a new concern that hadn’t been raised before. The new pump station would have been connected in series, rather than parallel configuration, so a pump failure at any site could shut down the entire system.
The hydrology report indicated significant risks to neighborhood wells.
And, finally, a nearby active eagle’s nest would have required some mitigation.
How sewage commissioners reacted
Comox Councillor Ken Grant tried to deflect blame away from the sewage commission, which he claimed was saddled with a piece of property and bad original information.
He also appeared skepticall of staff’s recommendation to take 12 months to analyze other alternatives to the Beech Street pump station.
“My experience with how government works, is that whatever you say, we can times two,” he said.
Grant also proposed asking a utilities commission to review the consultants reports because he said they were so technical that he couldn’t understand them.
“We’re managing by crisis,” he said. “And when you do things by crisis, you make bad decisions.”
Courtenay councillor Erik Eriksson suggested staff take this one-year opportunity to consider a bigger sewer project that serves more residents. He specifically suggested a new treatment plant south of Courtenay to serve Union Bay, Royston and possibly Cumberland. He said it would take more pressure off the existing Courtenay-Comox sewerage system.
Comox Councillor Maureen Swift lamented the time and money spent over the several years on the Comox No. 2 pump station project, but she added that the goal was to make the right decision.
Courtenay Councillor Bob Wells reminded the Comox delegates that their municipality has dragged its feet on sewer projects. He mentioned delays in getting the Hudson and Greenwood sewer lines operational.
Area B director Rod Nicol, who was just recently granted a non-voting seat at the sewage commission, said there are too many red flags about the Beech Street project to seriously consider it any longer. But, he added, since it hasn’t been definitively taken off the list of possible options, he should retain his seat on the commission through the January 2019 meeting.
The only response to his request came from Commission Chair Barbara Price, of Comox, who said, “We can talk about that later.”
No Comox Valley-wide solution
The Opus report represents good progress in CVRD sewerage planning. It presents the sewage commission with an opportunity to study three better options than its Beech Street proposal, all of which move the main sewer pipe out of the K’omoks Estuary and Comox Bay and onto an overland route.
The scope of the report does not extend beyond removing pipes from Balmoral Beach and the estuary foreshore, and moving sewage over a longer term to the Brent Road treatment plant, which are all good and necessary goals.
But that still leaves the Royston-Union Bay area to the south of Courtenay and the Saratoga-Miracle Beach area to the north, and the Village of Cumberland, without any long-term strategy for wastewater management.
It’s a better patchwork solution, but it’s still a patch.
To address the broader community’s long-term needs, a Comox Valley-wide solution should at least be envisioned as part of the review of the three Opus options. At the least, any changes in realignment to the Courtenay-Comox sewerage system today must be compatible with requirements for the entire Valley tomorrow.
Almost all of the problems with the Beech Street pump station proposal that were identified in the five reports to the Courtenay-Comox Sewage Commission this week had already been raised by citizens from the affected Croteau Beach neighborhood years ago.
Had the commission listened to the citizens and took their concerns seriously, they could have saved two years and a lot of taxpayer money.
by George Le Masurier | Oct 24, 2017
The 2018 municipal election campaign got a jump start this week when Courtenay Councillor Erik Eriksson told Decafnation that he’s running for mayor.
Eriksson is the first Comox Valley candidate to formally announce his campaign.
While most incumbents and potential newcomers are still mulling the pros and cons of committing to a four-year term that won’t end until 2023, Eriksson said he couldn’t wait to start building support.
Eriksson said it wasn’t his intention to contest incumbent Mayor Larry Jangula for the mayor’s chair, but he also couldn’t wait for Jangula to finally decide if he’s retiring or seeking another term. Jangula has hinted at stepping down next year.
“I just had to get my campaign started,” Eriksson said. “It takes time to put together a successful support team for the mayor’s office.”
Voters go to the polls on Oct. 20 next year. The official nomination period for candidates begins on Sept. 3, 2018 and runs for 10 days.
Eriksson, who begins his sixth year on Courtenay City Council in 2018, is running on a simple platform: building partnerships.
He believes people who live in the region’s three municipalities and three unincorporated regional districts have common goals, and that by working together they can be more effective.
Eriksson isn’t using the “A-word” (amalgamation) because that’s a long and complicated process, which Valley voters have rejected in the past. But he believes there’s ample space for municipalities, the regional district, K’omoks First Nation and CFB Comox to share more services.
It’s one of his best skills, he believes, to resolve problems by helping people to find a common purpose.
“It’s amazing how effective you can be if you just talk … and discover that common ground,” he said.
Eriksson points to his support for the Committee to End Homelessness, the Community Health Network, the Food Bank and the Courtenay Youth Music Centre as examples.
If elected, Eriksson would apply those skills to bring the council together.
And he’s motivated by a single purpose, “to make things better for people who don’t have it so good,” he said.
Some candidates like to work on building campaigns privately, and announce at the last minute. But Eriksson didn’t hesitate to publicly announce his candidacy early.
“It’s going to take time to show voters all the ways we can work better through partnerships. I want to use the credibility I’ve built to champion this cause,” he said.
by George Le Masurier | Oct 19, 2017
They come here to retire. They come from across Canada, the United States and other countries. They come for the Comox Valley’s moderate climate and spectacular landscape.
They come, they stay and they age. And so the Comox Valley’s population has aged at a rate nearly double the provincial average.
Within the next 20 years, the Valley’s population of people 75 years old and older is predicted to double. People over the age of 65 already comprise almost a third of the Valley’s total population, and it will continue to be the region’s fastest growing age group.
They come because the Comox Valley is well-known as one Vancouver Island’s best places to retire.
But it’s less well-known that as a result of this increasing elder population, the Comox Valley has become a not-so-great place to grow old.
Especially for those of modest wealth.
If you can afford them, and find a vacancy, the Comox Valley appears to be awash in private seniors independent- and assisted-living facilities. Most are full and have long waiting lists, and new units sometimes sell out before construction begins.
But for seniors surviving at the lower end of the income scale, and those who need government assistance, there are fewer choices.
That’s why the recent closure of Abbeyfield House in Courtenay, which displaced 10 senior citizens from their independent living home, has created such a community uproar.
Abbeyfield House
The backstory of Abbeyfield’s closure reveals the root problem: There is a dearth of residential care beds and affordable seniors housing in the Comox Valley.
The province’s 12 Abbeyfield Houses are designed for lower income seniors and those who prefer a smaller facility. The houses, including six on Vancouver Island, provide affordable housing for people over the age of 55 who are capable of living independently, but want a “supportive domestic atmosphere (that) provides companionship and freedom from worries and chores.”
As Abbeyfield residents age and their health declines, and they can no longer live independently, it is expected they will move to more appropriate residential care facilities. Then Abbeyfield Houses can make room for independent seniors on their waiting lists. The Courtenay Abbeyfield House had more than 30 eligible seniors on its wait list.
Except there haven’t been any available beds in residential care or similar affordable housing facilities in the Comox Valley. And none of the Abbeyfield tenants wanted to move. They were content with the excellent “at home” care provided by Island Health’s home care program, which it would have continued to do if Abbeyfield had remained open.
When Abbeyfield closed last week, its youngest resident was 91. She should have been moved into residential care years ago, but Island Health had no where to put her. Instead, seven different Island Health professionals have been making an average of 115 visits per week to care for her and other (not all) of the Abbeyfield residents.
Many 91-year-olds do live in the community, however, some with support and some who can still manage independently. Age is not always an indicator of need for residential care.
Island Health told Decafnation that it supported Abbeyfield tenants to continue living in the community — as they do with any person who chooses to remain as independent as possible and who needs support.
But because the Comox Valley lacks sufficient residential care beds to meet growing demand, Abbeyfield had become a hybrid type of care facility to which it didn’t aspire or could afford.
The story of one Abbeyfield resident illustrates how ridiculous the situation had become.
An elderly woman resident suddenly required acute hospital care. The hospital treated her and then sent her back to Abbeyfield on a stretcher. She was bed-ridden. Abbeyfield sent her back to the hospital, which refused her and she landed back in Abbeyfield with Island Health workers providing the care she should have been getting in a long-term residential facility.
One Abbeyfield resident suffering from dementia has occasionally wandered off the premises, requiring the House Coordinator to find and rescue her. But the House Coordinator’s job is only to prepare meals and to do other household chores. There is no overnight supervision at Abbeyfield Houses.
When Abbeyfield closed its doors, Island Health was forced to find placements within the Valley for the tenants, which created a momentary housing crisis. Other people, who desperately needed beds and had waited patiently on the waitlist, were bumped — or triaged — to accommodate the soon to be homeless Abbeyfield tenants.
Placement in publicly-funded residential care is based on several factors, according to Island Health, including urgency and need, and the type of bed and geographical area selected. It is not a first-come, first-serve system.
Most of the former Abbeyfield tenants are now receiving care at Casa Loma; two went to live with family and one resides in another local residential facility.
But another group of citizens, called Save Abbeyfield, believes the Abbeyfield model is still viable in the Comox Valley. And they have offered to step-in and re-open the residence.
They hope to do that before the current board sells the property or gifts it to another non-profit organization.
Jennifer Pass, one of the Save Abbeyfield contacts, said they would address the residential bed crisis in a different way.
“It is necessary to have good relationships with sponsors, and have two sponsors for every tenant,” she said. “Sponsors must be well aware, when their relative or friend moves in, that it is for “independent” seniors. If the resident gets to the point of putting other tenants at risk, and if one has not the support of Island Health in moving the person along, then it may be necessary to evict the person.
“Often a person is hospitalized and then it may be crucial to not allow the person to return to the facility (Berwick, Casa Loma, etc.) all have to deal with this situation.
“I found with my mum that a clear letter as to whose responsibility it would be if she returned to Casa Loma (an assisted living facility) and had a fall or suffered physical harm in assisted living can be very helpful if presented to hospital staff.
“Having sponsors on side is very helpful, and achieved by good lines of communication from the outset.”
Pass and Abbeyfield board chair Joan Carson could probably agree on one point:
The lack of affordable housing for seniors and a lack of residential care beds are distinct problems that became linked because Island Health looked at Abbeyfield as a safe place to park people — its tenants were getting meals and some supervision.
Regardless of whether Abbeyfield reopens, a crisis-driven method of initiating change for our elders is unacceptable. Surely the provincial Ministry of Health can do better than this.
In response to a request for comment, MLA Ronna-Rae Leonard returned the following statement:
“It must have been very stressful for the tenants and families to learn that Abbeyfield was closing. I am glad that all 10 of Abbeyfield’s tenants have been placed in new homes – this is great news.
“One of our new government’s top priorities is improving the services people count on, and we’re working hard, but 16 years of B.C. Liberal neglect can’t be fixed overnight.”
It’s a politicized comment. And disappointing that the newly-elected MLA couldn’t say she was doing something specific to assuage a growing community concern.
And the problem gets worse
Seniors who require residential care beds aren’t just plugging facilities designed for independent seniors, they are also taking up acute care beds — and acute care funding.
Chris Kelsey, chair of the St. Joseph’s General Hospital board, estimates that more than 30 percent of the community’s acute care beds are occupied by people who need an alternate level of care (ALC). In other words, there are perhaps 40-50 frail and elderly people, who do not need acute care, taking up beds at the new Comox Valley Hospital because there is nowhere more appropriate to move them.
This problem isn’t unique to the Comox Valley, but it’s more severe here.
According to a 2015 report by the B.C. Care Providers Association, “roughly 13 percent of every bed-night (province-wide) is being used by somebody who should be at another level of care.”save Abbeyfield
Acute care beds cost taxpayers between $800 to $2,000 per day, while residential care beds typically cost about $200. The BCCPA has proposed redirecting some acute care funding to the development of new long-term residential care facilities.
Kelsey said St. Joseph’s recognized this problem many years ago when it created a transition unit to park people who were previously treated as medical patients, but no longer needed that level of care. It was a controversial move at the time, but is now common among the province’s hospitals.
Is long-term care help on the way?
The scope of the Valley’s problem starts to come into focus when you consider that just 4 percent of the senior population will want or require residential care and there are already 421 residential care beds in four publicly-funded Comox Valley facilities. All of them are full and they all have waiting lists.
Island Health planned to build 70 new residential care beds in the Comox Valley, and issued a Request For Proposal last year. That many new beds would have eased the pressure on many other organizations, including Abbeyfield.
But over the summer, Island Health withdrew the proposal shortly after the change in provincial government and its decision to move the four hospice beds at St. Joseph’s General Hospital to a secular facility, along with two new hospice beds.
The 70 new residential care beds are urgently needed, and their imminent construction gave hope to elderly caregivers and also to housing providers, such as Abbeyfield House.
But the withdrawal of the RFP was crushing. Local care givers now fear a multi-year delay in bringing the new beds into service. But Island Health is more optimistic. The agency told Decafnation that the new beds should be ready for occupancy in late in 2019.
Island Health Director of Residential Services, Tim Orr, says the RFP was withdrawn due to changing requirements and community input. That included whether people would have access to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) and where to locate the four existing and two new hospice beds.
But increasing the number of residential beds in the RFP was also part of the discussion. Orr said Island Health recognizes the Comox Valley’s need for more residential beds, but also for more affordable housing for independent seniors. Other communities have more of the latter.
Orr said faith-based providers, such as St. Joseph’s, are not excluded from responding to the RFP because the typical level of cognitive deficit of residential care patients excludes them from qualifying for MAiD.
One bright spot in this quagmire is the proposal to redevelop and refocus The Views, a 117-bed residential care facility operated by St. Joseph’s. They are planning a dementia village facility, perhaps with more beds, surrounded by a campus of seniors care services that might include a pharmacy and seniors daycare.
They plan to proceed regardless if they are successful in a bid for the additional residential beds contract.
About 90 percent of The Views’ residents have dementia. And while the average age of residential care patients has declined, the percentage suffering with dementia is likely to increase.
To build its vision, St. Joseph’s intends to merge with Providence Health Care in a new society not governed by the B.C. Hospital Act. Because the province does not provide funds for capital construction, the new society could borrow against its assets and future revenue.
Kelsey is confident that Island Health supports this vision, especially since Providence already plays a leading role in B.C. dementia care.
Where do we go from here?
The residential bed crisis in the Comox Valley is a complex problem. It involves medical, ethical and financial issues that won’t be solved by multiple groups asking the provincial government for a variety and sometimes conflicting resolutions.
For political and practical purposes, Victoria wants to hear The Valley speak with only one voice.
But what voice? The absence of a Comox Valley-wide co-ordinating authority has in the past led to short-term thinking and patchwork solutions on a number of different fronts — sewerage, water treatment, transportation and so on.
In order to develop a regional strategy on elderly care and seniors housing for all income levels, all the disparate Comox Valley groups must work together. That doesn’t mean everyone has to abandon their philosophical principles.
It means finding common ground, those points on which there is collective agreement, such as the urgent need to provide more residential care beds. The Comox Valley needs to speak to Victoria in a singular voice on that issue.
by George Le Masurier | Oct 16, 2017
The purposeful neglect of the Mack Laing heritage house by the Town of Comox has reached a new low.
Hamilton Mack Laing gave his house, known as Shakesides, along with a substantial sum of money in his Last Will and Testament for the purpose of converting it into a public natural history museum. Laing, an internationally respected naturalist and ornithologist, died in 1982.
But the town has done nothing over the intervening 35 years to comply with Laing’s last wishes, and has intentionally let the building fall into disrepair. Council members apparently hope their neglect will garner support for the effort to tear it down.
But the Mack Laing Heritage Society (MLHS) hopes to preserve Shakesides in its current condition, at least until the B.C. Supreme Court rules on the town’s application to demolish the building. That seems reasonable.
And it was in that spirit that MLHS offered to place a tarp on the roof of Shakesides to prevent moisture from entering the building through a decades-old roof and to stop further deterioration of the famous naturalist’s home on Comox Bay.With another wet winter in the forecast, council members should have accepted the offer. Especially because MLHS members proposed to pay the entire labor cost of a professional installation.
And they made this offer with plenty of time to get such a simple task done over last spring and summer.
Vandals recently attacked Shakesides for the second time, but no other structure in Mack Laing Park. That suggests the vandalism is politically motivated. See the full gallery of photographs below.
MLHS President J-Kris Nielsen first presented the group’s offer verbally at a Committee of the Whole meeting on March 22, 2017, complete with projected costs. He followed that up with an April 17 letter to the town detailing a work plan that included drawings and itemized material costs totalling $1,892.80.
The letter was officially stamped “Received” on April 20, 2017.
Seven months later, the town has yet to respond. Not a letter. Not an email. Not a phone call.
The Town of Comox voted unanimously in February to ask the B.C. Supreme Court to release the town from the terms of the trust established by Laing’s Last Will. That would allow them to demolish the house. No court date has been set.
So the council might have figured, why spend even $1,800 to preserve a building we hope to tear down? Fair enough, but doesn’t decency require a reply to well-intentioned citizens, at the least?
And consider this:
The town has hired the law firm Young & Anderson to make their case for demolition to the province’s high court. If they succeed, the town has committed to spend around $300,000 of taxpayer’s money to pay lawyers, demolish the building and build a viewing platform.
Yet council members can’t find $1,800 for a group of passionate citizens to tarp the roof? The MLHS might have even paid the whole bill if council had made a civil response.
It’s shameful. But no surprise.
For 35 years, the Town of Comox has neglected the last wishes of this important literary and ornithological person, and mismanaged his trusts. It’s shameful how the town has claimed Laing’s celebrity, when convenient, but has always ignored his desire for a legacy.
Those who prefer to save Shakesides have criticized council and pressured them to act. But that’s no justification for a town government to disrespect its citizens. Or act vindictively. They deserved a reply.
And, really, it seems only fair to put a tarp on a leaking roof until the Supreme Court hears the case, because there’s no guarantee how the court will rule, or view the town’s behavior in this matter.
Meanwhile, Shakesides recently suffered another attack by pretend graffiti artists.
Like the graffiti attack in April, vandals again spray-painted the historical home with lame images. It wasn’t serious tagging, much less artwork.
These latest vandals might be the same person or group of people. They just made a better effort. We’ll never know for sure.
But it is interesting that, like the last attack, no other sign, bridge, post or tree was spray-painted. That makes it likely that this defacing of public property is somehow connected to the political and legal battle over the preservation of Laing’s home.
And, of course, the defacing fits nicely with the Town Council’s policy of intentional neglect.
