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Delta: A municipality Under Siege
The new tag line for Delta: Door mat to Canada. It seems this is the treatment we residents are getting every time we turn on the news. Beginning with the completion of the Alex Fraser Bridge, recent development has been focused on moving more and more cargo and cars through us, and over our toes.
As a community we have been accommodating, accepting the tonnes of waste into the local land fill, opening 88th to Nordel allowing even better access to Alex Fraser Bridge for Surrey Residents, increasing congestion and pollution. We've been accommodating to the hourly ebb and flow of traffic from Ferries. Without comment, we've accommodated the ever increasing train and truck traffic from the port, and would be happy to live with more, provided some sound planning and well organized solutions are put forward.
What we are being throttled with is a bad plan that will destroy even more valuable property, diminish the air quality more rapidly, endanger our health, our economy, our eco system and our social harmony.
Open Season on Local Home Owners
Most of the residents in the Sunbury and Annieville communities that populate the Fraser Shores of North Delta are average working class people. Most of us are invested into our homes at great risk in high leverage mortgages. For most of us, if we lose our job, or have a major incident, we could lose our homes and all our investment with them. Yet a government, with guaranteed financial resources (they throw you in jail for not paying taxes after all) is permitted to dictate to us that we should 'take one for the team' the same tired old argument about 'greater good' which in this case is anything but proven in the minds of individuals and city planners alike.
The loss in property value of the homes in the Sunbury & Annieville Communities will be devastating to the residents in most cases and Gateway has said unequivocally that no compensation will be offered to any owner whose property is not touched.
If they could prove to a reasonable degree that the road is going to be anything more than just another parking lot where Surrey and Valley commuters dump tonnes of exhaust, and degenerate trucks idlely spew carcinogenic pollutants on our kids' schools, we could stomach the loss, but all evidence is that we will be the victims of increased pollution and diminished health.
Gateway tells us that one benefit is that it will "create health care jobs..." (Page 39 Volume 16 of Gateway's EAO Submission) due to the increased incidence of respiratory irritation and cancer in local children.
Aside from being inhumane and appalling, this argument is wrong. Money for Health Care is set by government budget, and all of us have seen over the past years that demand increases but funding is cut again and again. So the ultimate end of Gateway's argument is that Health will be negatively impacted, and due to a poorly managed mitigation plan, mortality for Sunbury and Annieville children will be significantly higher than other communities in the GVRD.
Delta Municipality Evaluation of Gateway's Plan
- 90 ha (222 acres) of prime agricultural land expropriated
- 15 ha (37 acres) of prime agricultural land severed or isolated
- 7 heritage properties directly impacted
- 96 residentially-zoned land either entirely or partially expropriated
- Taxes lost as property values plummet
- 77 ha (190 acres) industrial land expropriated, severed, or isolated
- $44 – 66 million cumulative gross taxes by 2021
- 27 ha (67 acres) of land with ecological or hydrological importance to Burns Bog
- The SFPR will drive through land Delta has been systematically acquiring along the periphery of Burns Bog, in an attempt to protect the bog.
- 96 ha (237 acres) of wildlife habitat and the interruption of wildlife corridors
- 3.1 ha (8 acres) aquatic habitat
- 15.4 ha (36 acres) riparian habitat
- Noise and visual impacts to homes in North Delta and Ladner
In response to Delta’s concerns:
- The Ministry of Transportation refuses Delta’s request to implement AirCare for heavy trucks.
- The Ministry of Transportation has not yet agreed to help lobby Translink to ban trucks on River Rd, once the SFPR is built.
- The Ministry of Transportation wouldn't commit to replacing lost trees consistent with Delta’s goal of 40% tree canopy.
- The Ministry of Transportation is still negotiating remediation for abandoned, provincially licensed, Demolition, Land clearing, and Construction (DLC) landfills that the SFPR will cross. The SFPR will run over some of these old contaminated DLC landfills, effectively squeezing out leachate.
- “As with the tunnel option, Gateway has dismissed the ‘snow shed’ concept as cost prohibitive.”
Gateway is proposing compensation for habitat loss. Delta wants assurance that compensation lands for Delta losses will be located within Delta.
Tired of the Government Shaft
It seems we've lost something in the last twenty years: a little thing I like to call "democracy". We are compelled against our desire and need to pay layer upon layer of taxes to every government, yet when it is time to use the money, we have NO SAY. Yet companies seem to have no end of control over the whims of the politicians and pay next to no taxes because of the hundreds of tax loop holes designed to serve the rich.
Before getting mad about rich people and companies, you might consider this: They are rich because they take good care of their money. They don't pay taxes, because they don't believe the government will take as good care of the money as they will. And that is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
I think the rest of us tax slaves need to think more like that.
How do we fix it? The only way the masses can. Pull together and declare open season on the "dictatorship". Demand true public input with consequences and punishments for politicians who ignore or sidestep the process, or use the system to bully the public.
