Questions about the Town of Comox’s handling of the Mack Laing Trust are not new. Citizens expressed concern many years ago, including Comox Valley Citizen of the Year Ruth Masters.
In April of 2001, she wrote to then Mayor George Kirkwood and councillors asking for financial information related to the trust and suggesting that some of the Laing funds had been used for inappropriate purposes.
Here is Master’s letter:
I’m done with deer.
On any given day, small herds of deer eat their way through local neighborhoods. They wander onto busy streets and stop traffic, sometimes with fatal results. They damage property, threaten people and pets, pose health risks and attract dangerous animals.
We call them “urban” deer, perhaps to trick ourselves into thinking they belong in our environment. Kind of like metrosexuals.
Why do we put up with this? If any other creature roamed our city streets with such brazen disregard for human existence, the phones of pest exterminators would ring off the hook.
Aren’t deer just rats with longer legs and better PR? Not so, for some people who see deer as lovable woodland creatures, like Bambi, and out of this misguided fantasy decide to feed them.
But gardeners lose thousands of dollars worth of plants to the voraciously hungry deer, and spend thousands more on fencing and other methods to deter them. Seiffert’s Farm lost so many crops to foraging deer that they fenced off their entire farm, at great expense.
“We need to make it socially unacceptable — just like littering.”
Other communities have mounted a variety of counter-offensives to send the deer high-tailing it out of town. So what is the Comox Valley doing?
Nada. Zippo.
Representatives for both the Town of Comox and the Comox Valley Regional District say neither entity has a bylaw against feeding deer, and have no plan to reduce the Valley’s urban deer population.
A CVRD representative said the deer are a provincial problem, but the B.C. Conservation Service and the Ministry of Forest, Lands and Resource Operations deny it. There is a B.C. law against feeding dangerous animals, and deer don’t qualify. The province will only help reduce urban deer populations if local governments request their assistance.
Everyone knows, or should know, that it’s harmful to feed wild animals. So let’s urge Comox Valley municipalities to pass laws that prohibit feeding deer, as Parksville, Nanaimo, Oak Bay and other B.C. communities have done.
Even the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals opposes feeding wildlife. They say feeding makes habituated wildlife more susceptible to predators and traffic collisions.
“We need to make it socially unacceptable — just like littering,” said the BC SPCA chief scientific officer.
There are myriad reasons why the Comox Valley should reduce its deer population.
Deer attract dangerous animals. Deer make up about 95 percent of a cougar’s diet, and are lured into the urban area by the easy prey of unwary deer. The area conservation officer confirmed frequent cougar sightings in the Valley.
School District 71 occasionally issues warnings about cougar sightings. Many parents who fear cougar attacks in rural and semi-rural areas stay with their kids until they board the school bus.
Letting the deer population go unchecked raises the risk of spreading Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. While reported cases of Lyme disease are not as prevalent here as in the Lower Mainland and other areas, a high density of deer means more ticks and a greater risk.
Some B.C. communities are going beyond no-feeding bylaws to control their deer populations. Kimberly, a town of 10 square kilometers removed 200 deer in one cull. Cranbrook reduces its deer population by 20 to 25 annually.
A group of four Kootenay towns spent $100,000 to live-trap about 80 deer and relocated them to wilderness areas. But the experts we interviewed say this is a bad idea. Domesticated deer don’t survive long in an environment with more predators and less garden produce to snack on.
I only support culling wildlife as a method of last resort. But it would cost far less to cull the local deer population and donate the venison to Comox Valley food banks.
Whether to act, and how aggressively, depends on our community’s values. Is the current urban deer population socially acceptable? I join the chorus of those who say no.
But we’d better have this important policy debate. Because after we figure out how to manage the deer, there are about 80 gazillion feral bunnies hopping into our yards right behind them.
Advance voting is underway for the June 18 referendum when Royston and Union Bay voters will decide whether to tax themselves to build and connect to a community wastewater system.
To clear up some of the misinformation about this Comox Valley Regional District sewerage initiative, Project Watershed Technical Director Dan Bowen and I had a meeting this week with Kris LaRose.
La Rose is the CVRD’s manager of liquid waste planning, and the project manager for the South Sewer Project (SSP).
The meeting immediately made one thing crystal clear: residents will not vote to approve a specific plan, such as where to locate the treatment plant or how to route the pipeline connecting the system to an outfall. La Rose said those details are not definitive. They have changed, and could change again.
This is a referendum about money. Do residents want to pay more than $2,000 a year for 30 years to build the system, and then another one-time expense ranging from $2,000 to $12,000 to connect to it? Or, by voting “no,” do they prefer to pay to upgrade their own septic systems?
The June 18 referendum cannot be interpreted as community approval of the plan. It will only reasonably conclude whether voters want to pay for constructing a system of indefinite design.
Bowen and I came away from the meeting with mixed feelings.
Project Watershed and other Valley environmentalists don’t want any new pipelines through the K’omoks estuary or Baynes Sound. And, we want existing pipelines removed, and rerouted through less risky overland routes.
But Project Watershed also opposes the route proposed for the South Sewer Project’s pipeline that originates near the end of Marine Drive South.
Why? Because if voters pass the referendum, the pipeline would cut through the Trent River Estuary, an important wildlife habitat area. It will also pass through a salt marsh and across an area where the group has spent nearly $200,000 to sub-tidally reestablish eelgrass and other marine vegetation.
A better route for the pipeline, if there has to be one, would originate further south, avoiding the estuary and the new eelgrass beds. That would take a straighter and shorter line to the point where the pipe crosses the Comox sand bar — only 15 feet below the surface at low tide — enroute to connect with the outfall at the Brent Road treatment plant.
Once the proposed pipeline from the SSP reaches the treatment plant, it would bypass treatment, and join the existing three-kilometre outfall pipe that runs about a metre under the Point Holmes beach, until it turns offshore at the bottom of the bluff at the end of the CFB Comox runway.
La Rose said the CVRD would entertain a presentation from Project Watershed on revising the early part of the route, and that’s encouraging. The connection to the existing outfall at Brent Road is set in stone.
There’s been some confusion about the location of the existing outfall, perhaps because it’s wrongly mapped in the CVRD’s own 2011 Sewage Master Plan.
A map inserted into the SMP (between pages 10 and 11) incorrectly shows the outfall turning offshore in line with Southwind Road, far short of the boat launch and its actual location below the bluff and the airport.
Putting miles of new pipe in a sensitive marine environment doesn’t make sense, except that the safer overland route through the Courtenay pump station #1 comes with a higher price tag. But can we put a value on preserving the Valley’s natural assets?
On the other hand, La Rose said the wastewater from the proposed new SSP treatment plant would be cleaned to reclaimed water level, much higher than the degree of cleaning at the Brent Road treatment plant. But the SSP effluent would only amount to about 10 percent of the total flow through the combined outfall.
And, of course, none of this water will be reclaimed. The proposal is to pump it into the Strait of Georgia.
But even with the better treatment, the proposed new plant would not remove pharmaceuticals or nitrates. Studies show that it’s harmful to pour unnecessarily high levels of these chemicals into our oceans, which eventually make their way back to humans through the food chain.
That raises the question why the CVRD has not yet upgraded treatment levels at the Brent Road plant? It wasn’t leading technology in 1984, and it seriously lags the best treatment systems available today.
It’s also worrisome that the CVRD has not done detailed geomorphlology and hydrology studies about how the SSP high density poly pipeline will affect — or be affected — the Comox sand bar, which runs from Goose Spit to the islets at the tip of Denman Island.
Without these environmental studies, and definitive plant siting and pipeline routing, the results of the June 18 referendum cannot be interpreted as community approval of the plan. It will only reasonably conclude whether voters want to pay for constructing a system of indefinite design.
If the referendum passes, we hope the CVRD will engage residents and Project Watershed to collaborate on the final plan details.
The Comox Valley’s counter-culture came together during the 1970s for the annual Renaissance Faire. There was music, dancing, arts and crafts and, to the horror of The Establishment, smoking of marijuana — done secretly in those days, of course. Fashion trends seem to favor long skirts and dresses for women, while the men went topless over old jeans.
Do you recognize anyone in this photograph? if you do, please leave a comment below. Or just share your memories of the Renaissance Faire. You can also join the conversation by “liking” the Decafnation Facebook page.
Keep on truckin’
The Comox Valley Arts Alliance was formed sometime in the mid-1970s. I joined the organization soon after it was founded. During my lunch hours, I left my desk as editor of the Lifestyles section of the Comox District Free Press, and walked down McPhee Avenue to the Arts Alliance building. I hung out there often, and played chess sometimes with reporter Brian Belton. I also once hung my first one-man photography exhibition there.
I’m fuzzy on when and where this photograph was taken, so maybe readers can provide more reliable information. I captured this image at one of the Comox Valley’s Renaissance Fairs, which I think were promoted by the Arts Alliance. The scene is typical of the new cultural events happening in the 1970s. People sang, danced, created art and where just there.
I don’t know any of the singers in this photograph, so maybe readers can add some names and a better recollection of this event.