A simmering question of whether to restrict growth by refusing to turn on the water taps could soon boil over at the Capital Regional District.
The issue has arisen as CRD directors review the latest draft of what’s being called the Regional Sustainability Strategy, a revised and expanded version of the CRD’s Regional Growth Strategy.
Included in the sustainability strategy is a provision that no new water servicing be allowed outside municipal boundaries. That means there would be no possibility of CRD water being piped into the unincorporated Juan de Fuca electoral area except in East Sooke, Otter Point and Port Renfrew.
“The matter at issue is whether CRD piped water should be made available to those areas outside the urban growth boundary that do not already have access,” Signe Bagh, CRD senior manager regional and strategic planning, told directors Wednesday.
Opinions on the issue appear to be evenly split, she said.
“There are some who are against such access because they feel that access will encourage sprawl,” Bagh said. “Then there are some who are in favour of such access because they feel that such access is a basic right.”
Falling in the latter camp is Mike Hicks, the CRD director for the Juan de Fuca electoral area, who said the provisions to restrict water supply are “very harsh and very frustrating.”
Hicks said the policy would allow municipalities to “put water throughout their area to every man, woman, child and animal” while Juan de Fuca could not. He called the restrictions discriminatory and suggested they violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Hicks said he wasn’t fighting to get water piped into Juan de Fuca, but trying to protect smaller CRD water systems within his area that may be called upon to provide water to a single user down the road.
Sooke Coun. Rick Kasper said denying water to Juan de Fuca, especially in the case where someone’s well becomes inadequate, would fly in the face of the CRD board’s endorsement of the right to fresh air, clean water and healthy food.
“I don’t want to see us turn Juan de Fuca into a Third World-type category where you have inadequate water supply,” Kasper said.
But three of five municipalities who have commented on the Regional Sustainability Strategy have said they won’t support a policy that allows water servicing outside the growth containment area, Bagh said.
Meanwhile, many directors and members of the public were critical of the sustainability strategy itself, saying that it is a watered-down version of the original growth strategy and doesn’t go far enough to prevent urban sprawl.
Highlands resident and environmentalist Vicky Husband said the proposed document “is too long, too vague, overly complex and has no teeth.”
“Cracks in regional planning and urban containment boundaries … are serious, and this new document, the [Regional Sustainability Strategy], is full of them,” she said. “We want a growth boundary that can be defended and not breached at the whim of a developer or a pro-development council.”
Victoria Coun. Geoff Young said the effectiveness of the Regional Growth Strategy “has been badly diminished.”
What is needed, he said, is a regional land-use policy.
“[We should] really stick it in people’s faces,” Young said. “We are talking about zoning. And rather than talking about targets for densification, let’s talk about: ‘Is a carriage house on a rural property urban sprawl or isn’t it?’ What about this water issue?”
Directors adjourned their meeting pending an in-camera meeting to get legal advice on the legitimacy of the Regional Sustainability Strategy.
