Re: “$250 million for upgrades to graving dock,” Feb. 28.
As a resident of Shawnigan Lake, I was troubled that there was no mention in your article that most of the soil dredged from the Esquimalt graving dock was trucked to the contaminated-soil dump above our watershed in Shawnigan Lake.
The permit for this site was recently pulled by the B.C. Ministry of the Environment for non-compliance, among other things. This situation was in the courts at the time that the federal government was moving soil to the site and the federal government was well aware of this fact.
South Island Aggregates offered the lowest price to accept the soil, and the government chose to use the site without regard for public concerns about health or environmental risk.
Our community has spent nearly $2 million in legal costs to fight this soil coming into our community’s watershed, so it would seem only fair that the federal government, with $250 million to spend on this project, would see a way to pay for the removal and cleanup of its mess and to reimburse the community of Shawnigan Lake for their legal costs to fight it.
This would be a mere pittance to them, but has been a staggering financial loss and four years of stress for our community.
Alison Philp
Shawnigan Lake
