Marjolijn | stock.adobe.com
Despite the Cowichan Valley Regional District’s (CVRD’) Electoral Area Services Committee recommendation that a rezoning application from Radius Recycling near the Nanaimo Airport in Cassidy, British Columbia, proceed pending further environmental assessment and planning, the application has been denied twice by CVRD directors after being under consideration for more than seven years.
According to reports in the Cowichan Valley Citizen, the application was denied Dec. 13, 2023, and again Jan. 10.
The rezoning would have required Radius Recycling to update an environmental management plan to address protecting the Cassidy aquifer, create a stormwater management plan and complete an environmental impact assessment and a fire protection report and establish an area on the property for after-hours scrap metal drop-offs.
The Cowichan Valley Citizen reports that Nures Kara, senior environmental manager at Radius, said that while the business is comfortable with most of the recommendations, a 15-meter (nearly 50 feet) setback and an 8-meter (more than 26 feet) landscape buffer with adjacent agricultural land will “significantly impact our ability to operate.”
“My position was clear at committee about the need to protect the aquifer and the way forward is not to give up the zoning,” the Cowichan Valley Citizen reports Ben Maartman, director for North Oyster-Diamond, as saying during the Dec. 13 meeting.
Sierra Acton, director for Shawnigan Lake; Jesse McClinton, director for Saltair-Gulf Islands; Hilary Abbott, director for Cowichan Bay; and Mike Wilson, director for Cobble Hill, voted to move forward with the recommendations at the Dec. 8, 2023, committee meeting, according to the paper’s reporting, but agreed with Maartman. They added that the future of the site and the aquifer is uncertain either way they voted.
The Cowichan Valley Citizen reports that CVRD Chairperson Aaron Stone accepted a letter from Radius’ lawyers to reconsider the decision and allow directors to vote again. The news outlet, citing the letter, says the board “lost sight of the purpose and objective” of the application, noting that the company’s auto salvage activities at the site are lawful and should be “continued indefinitely on the land.”
The letter also states, “Schnitzer has never been opposed to taking steps to protect the aquifer. In addition to the improvements and protection measures implemented on the Lands, it has conducted extensive testing. The results of those tests are overwhelmingly clear: Schnitzer’s activities on the Lands have had no detectable impact on the Cassidy Aquifer,” the Cowichan Valley Citizen reports.
Ian Morrison, director of Cowichan Lake South-Skutz Falls, said denying the application would eliminate the opportunity to have protections put in place and “shut down the conversation” at the local level as the issue would move to the provincial government.
He voted against denying the application, joined by Mike Wilson, director of Cobble Hill.