Editor:
I have nothing against organized sports (baseball) in Tsawwassen, or organized religion as far as that goes, but they have too much ‘righteous’ power on their side disproportionate to their numbers but impacting the entire community.
The current tree removal plan in Winskill Park is a perfect case in point.
A seasonal sport that operates three or four months a year has determined the future of the trees at the park because baseball ‘needs’ a fourth diamond. The fact that dog walkers or passive park users ’need’ the trees or that the disc golf groups ’need’ the park space as well, is irrelevant. An organized sport with organized lobbyists has made it so. Those very expensive fields sit empty for most of the year and have few alternative uses.
Delta’s solution is to plant 400 new trees somewhere - wherever we can fit them in at the edges or in leftover space or anywhere else in Tsawwassen - but no real plan or strategy even exists.
This is political ‘greenwashing’ at its best and answers a question no one asked! It also ignores the fact that it will take 20-plus years for the trees to achieve decent size to be considered an amenity and 50 years to achieve the size of the current trees.
In the interim we’ll have another under utilized water hungry and high maintenance field for the (influential) few, kind of like the lawn bowling facility and built at taxpayer expense.
Peter Dandyk
