Maple Ridge Council Chambers packed to the rafters : WC Mediawire

NEWS RELEASE -- WEDNESDAY MARCH 20 2002
Maple Ridge Council Chambers
packed to the rafters as speaker after speaker implores Council to back-off
Heavy Industrial Zoning of land adjoining
Golden Ears Provincial Park and
Blue Mountain Recreation Area.

Maple Ridge, BC -- They came despite the snowstorm. They came despite the short notice. Several hundred people, mostly from Maple Ridge neighborhoods, drove, walked and snowshoed to Maple Ridge City Hall last night to say their piece to Mayor and Council at a Public Hearing about the future of an 8.2 hectare block of forested land sandwiched between Golden Ears Provincial Park and Blue Mountain Recreation Area and located right on top of the Kanaka Creek headwaters.

Approximately 240 people shoehorned themselves into the council chamber gallery in a space designed to hold 150. They began to file in about 6:30pm and the Public Hearing started at 7:00. Each person who wanted to speak to the proposal to zone 8.2 hectares of land located at the end of 256th Street to heavy industrial was give an initial 5 minutes to state their case to Mayor and Council. Later in the evening people were given second and third chances to add more information -- though few took the opportunity to speak again. The presentations continued with only two short rest breaks until past 11:30pm.

Not a single presenter supported Council's proposal to zone the land heavy industrial -- not a single one.

"It was an amazing evening," said Wilderness Committee Director Joe Foy who attended and spoke at the Public Hearing. "The evening was jam packed with local people presenting good solid ecological and economic reasons as to why this proposal should not go through," said Foy.

Next Tuesday, March 26, Maple Ridge Mayor and Council will meet again at 7pm, in the Maple Ridge City Hall Council Chambers to debate and then to vote on the proposal to zone the land to heavy industrial.

"You can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be in the gallery next Tuesday evening," said Foy. "If council was listening last night then they simply must turn down the heavy industrial zoning proposal. On March 26, the fate of Golden Ears, Blue Mountain, Kanaka Creek, -- and local democracy -- all hang in the balance."

For more information please contact: 
Joe Foy -- Tel: (604) 683-8220 Cell: (604) 880-2580

03/23/2002
Gravel gripes (2)

By Tom Fletcher
The motley coalition that massed against the District of Maple Ridge
gravel and asphalt proposal Tuesday night scored some hits, and some
misses.

Geoff Clayton and Don Gillespie were the Tom and Huck of the Coquitlam
River valley in their youth, and they among many others will spend the
rest of their lives working to make sure nothing like that gravel
development happens again in the B.C. rainforest. Gillespie was the bad
cop, playing the guilt card amid unclear images of gouged ravines and
dead, murky Coquitlam water.

Clayton was the good cop, seeking solutions in a room packed with
angry people, the majority of whom seemed fixated on fear and blame.
Clayton's solution is to take a year, an entire rainforest weather cycle,
to test and verify the groundwater and contamination hazards before
the site is opened to the elements. That sounds like a hit.

Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee has already
demonstrated his talents in the recent Blue Mountain logging debate. His
strength is his ability to make emotional appeals for support. His main
weakness is local knowledge, which may in fact be an asset if the
support one seeks is financial. Sounds like a miss.

Dave Smith of the Kanaka Creek watershed group accidentally helped his
opponents by mentioning the seven other pits that were mined out and
left, rather than being sculpted to his liking at taxpayer expense.
Settling ponds remain, which means they work. At least one of these old
pits is in the Kanaka headwaters, and no one produced a record of a
Coquitlam-style ecological disaster.

There was more talk of Coquitlam than there was of the Kirkpatrick pit,
now winding down after decades of extraction. Again, no evidence of
planetary destruction.

Coquitlam has two features this area lacks: a river and a ravine. Beware
the flood of emotional arguments.