Editor: One hundred and twenty thousand tandem-axle dump trucks! End-to-end they wouldn't reach the moon or circle the earth, but just might reach San Francisco from Tsawwassen.
That's how many dump truck trips would rumble through Tsawwassen; 60,000 delivering fill to the Southlands and 60,000 returning empty.
So ... during what years and periods would that occur; what times of day and which days of the week? How many trucks per hour, per day? Which streets would they use? We haven't the foggiest. Only if we approve the Southlands proposal would we learn these things.
Century Group promotes many benefits of Southlands development, provides detailed estimates of automobile traffic and offers a laudable program to enhance agriculture. But it seems the public and council will debate and decide the Southlands proposal
knowing nothing about the effect of 120,000 dump truck trips through our community.
Delta would have the right-of-approval over Century's fill import plan, and reasonably undisruptive schedules and routes might be agreed. But if fill importation were troublesome, it seems to me there would be some room for relaxation.
The required Flood Construction Level (FCL) for the Southlands area is found in Schedule E of the Official Community Plan: "... no building or any part thereof shall be constructed ... with the underside of a wooden floor system or top of concrete slab for areas to be used for habitation, business, or the storage of goods damageable by floodwaters lower than two point nine (2.9) metres Geodetic Survey of Canada (GSC) datum. The minimum land surface elevation around construction shall be two point three (2.3) metres GSC."
Century proposes a 4.2 metre FCL rather than the required 2.9 metres. This seems in response to a study of provincial FCL guidelines commissioned by Delta. It recommended a surrounding berm and far more fill ... but Delta hasn't changed its requirement.
Developments, including those on properties adjacent to Century's, need only meet the 2.9-metre requirement.
My guess is that if Century simply met Delta's bylaw requirement, the number of truckloads might be reduced by between a quarter and half. But that's still a lot of trucks.
Shouldn't the fill import plan be known before we decide to live with it? Only with this information can the public and council responsibly weigh the impact of fill importation upon our roads, traffic and the livability of our homes and businesses.
Uninformed decisions often attract costly disputes, regrets and recriminations.
Ed Ries
