Editor:
Re: Plenty of reasons to protect farmland from growing port, letter to the editor, Nov. 23
Vicki Huntington makes a great case for saving farmland, and I have no argument with her on that. In fact, I support her on that and from the results of the recent municipal election, there are many in the community who do.
However, one cannot make the argument that Prince Rupert port is an alternative to Deltaport.
Had Huntington chosen Ridley Port she would have had a stronger argument from a nearly comparable option for her case, as Ridley Port, the coal terminal, is nearly similar from a construction cost perspective.
It is constructed of rock fill very much like Point Roberts or Deltaport. However Ridley Port, like the Port of Prince Rupert, suffers the same disadvantage of being isolated by road or train due to landslides and avalanches every winter, which denies it being an all-weather port.
It would, of course, be disingenuous of me not to cite the advantages of both Ridley Port and the Port of Prince Rupert. When one considers the great circle route from Asia or Japan, the savings in steaming time is anything from eight to 12 hours less than using Deltaport. The same can be said, however, of using Deltaport over Long Beach, California.
This leads to the issue of farming land in Delta. The standard value of any land is the highest and best use or what use the land can be put to to return the greatest benefit.
I grew up on a farm in Scotland where we could produce 12 quarters to the acre of oats or 96 bushels per acre. Delta land could never produce that kind of yield to save its life.
I have never farmed in Delta, so I could stand to be corrected, but the land we are referring to here in Delta is below the water table and when the tides are full, the salt seawater rises in the land which at best could be labelled brackish.
Brackish land is not known for being fertile land or as fertile as the land we farmed in Scotland. What makes Delta land desirable is the length of the growing season, which has great bearing on productivity.
In Scotland we are experimenting with winter wheat crops developed in Canada with some success but not overwhelming. The farmland in Scotland where we lived has been farmed for centuries and therefore more developed.
Four or five centuries from now Delta land will be unbeatable, and is well on the way but has much farther to go. Getting the salt out of the land in Delta is a real challenge and perhaps some bright farmer may enlighten me as to how they are doing this in Delta.
Lastly, why and when did Prince Rupert port become an issue. Let us go back to another of Huntington's heroes, the hated Brian Mulroney. There were many labour strikes at the Port of Vancouver, so Prince Rupert was used by Mulroney and his cohorts to break the union in Vancouver. Especially grain shipments that held up Prairie farmers getting their grain shipped out.
If you could count the billions of dollars in waste this silly policy has cost Canadians and the demurrage paid when the road and rail access was blocked is stupendous.
Deltaport had to happen, has to happen and is happening. With the First Nation treaty, my question would be why would we prevent or disparage the usage of their land to store containers on, or build homes, or the highest and best use of their lands which really are brackish, less arable land?
Now I may not win any elections for saying this, but is it not time for a little realism around here?
Arthur David Serry
