What to do about Mannion Bay

If you look at a map of Bowen you'll see a big bite taken out of the Eastern side of the island. That bay is called Mannion Bay, named for one of the original settlers of Bowen Island, Joseph Mannion. It's a beautiful looking body of water, a protected bay looking across the Queen Charlotte Cannel to the Brittania Mountains on the continent. It's protected nature makes it a good place to paddleboard, especially in the winter when the winds and swell can be unpredictable in more exposed parts of the island.

There are three beaches on Mannion Bay, Sandy Beach, Mothers Beach and Pebbly Beach. These are our neighborhood beaches, used by local residents especially in the summer. And because the bay is protected, it is used as a free moorage by boat owners. There are three live aboard residents in the bay, several boats moored there over the winter, many more who arrive there on weekends in the summer and several other boats that are abandoned.

There are several issues in the bay, and they have been increasing over the years. The beaches are often unsafe for swimming due to fecal Coliform counts in the summer. There are a number of shipwrecks in the bay which over the years have leeched oil and battery chemicals into the seabed. There is literally tons of debris on the floor of the bay, some of it toxic, some of it just dangerous to shipping. Sandy Beach currently has a boat wrecked on the shore.

As I am a water user of the Bay, (and often floating in it as a paddle boarder) I have been interested in these issues over the years. I've learned that there are a number of causes for the deteriorating condition of the bay. These include:

• Improper or illegal activity by boaters, including dumping garbage or improper waste disposal.
• Abandonment of boats by owners who can't afford them anymore. These boats are ripped from their moorings during storms and sink or wash up on shore and then leach chemicals and debris into the bay.
• improper septic systems for the properties surrounding the bay. Many of these systems are legacy systems from the time before there were proper health standards. I have no idea how many septic systems need upgrading or repairing but it is significant. The water quality in the is primarily impacted by this issue.

A group of people have banded together to do something about the boat problem and they have been very active in recruiting our local MP into the fray. The group is spearheaded by the indomitable Bruce Russell who is a guy that is undaunted by obstacles, I have no doubt as long as he is involved there will be a resolution to the boat issue. The group Friends of Mannion Bay has tackled the problem of enforcing the complex regulatory environment that applies to boats and private marine property.  Today there was a letter in the Undercurrent about their efforts.

While I applaud these efforts, and especially Bruce's efforts to rally all the affected folks together - although I notice that the live aboards are not listed as being included in the Friends of the Bay and i hope he can reach out to them as collaborators instead of targets - one of the biggest concerns remains, and that is the septic problem in the watershed. The boating problem is a big part of the work that needs to be done, and I'm glad local property owners (of which I am one) are working together. But we also have a responsibility to the Bay. I have one of the few septic systems in my whole neighborhood that is up to code. There are a few other newer properties along Miller Road that also have up to code systems in good repair,

But many of the properties directly on the Bay or above the roads around the bay are having problems with their septic systems. To date I know of no study that has documented the state of the septic systems around the Bay, but I think we need that, for all of us whose fields drain into the water. While that is a municipal and provincial responsibility and the state of the water in the Bay is a federal responsibility, I wonder whether several levels of government can collaborate with property owners to do a proper assessment.

Solving the boating problems will take care of a large part of the issue and it's easier, because it is "out there.". What is harder is taking a look at ourselves and taking responsibility for how we contribute to the problem too.

The varieties of winter

Perhaps we need words for the seasons here on Bowen Island.  "Winter" isn't exactly accurate.  Since December 21 when Winter was supposed to have begun we have had the following kinds of days, among others:

• Cold and clear days with no wind
• Snow that falls in some places but rains in others
• Southeasterly winds with rain.
• Calm and cold everywhere except in the Queen Charlotte Channel where a Squamish wind one mile storm force wind is blowing with freezing spray.
• Foogy to 100 meters above sea level with an inversion making it 10 degrees on top of the mountains.
• Damp evenings that produce heavy hoarfrosts in the morning.
• Nights when the owls call for joy.
• Sunny and warm mornings when the winter wrens take a stab at their spring calls.
• Heavy snow that falls and stick on the Douglas-firs and cedars and brings down the alders and rotten maples.
• Quiet mornings when the towhees explore the underbrush.
• Days when it rains so hard that the deer just stand in it looking miserable. 
• Calm days where the ocean is like glass and you can here ravens calling from miles away.

It makes more sense around here to follow the old Celtic calendar which has just ticked over Imbolc on February 1, the beginning of spring.  It feels like that today, with southeasterly winds blowing and rain showers coming and going with patches of bright sky over the Sound.  

We love our herons

No bird gets more attention on Bowen Island then our herons.  One of the reasons that they get so much attention is that they regularly nest in the trees in Crippen Park near the library.  There is nothing more terrifying on a spring day then to see fights between hungry bald eagles and heron parents protecting their eggs.  The air fills with the sound of deep heron Groooooking and eagle shreiks.

But they are beautiful and iconic and i love them.  When I am out paddle boarding on Deep Bay I often share the afternoon with them, the two of us quietly standing on the water.

But there is another fights the herons are involved in.  They are involved in a fight for their survival.  The herons that live on Bowen are Coastal Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias fannini) a coastal subspecies that is protected under BC law.  Here are a set of documents related to their listing.

Here on Bowen Island, we got confused about these herons last year when Sue Ellen Fast reported breeding season had begun.  Janice Halligan did some research on the herons and uncovered all kinds of information.  She and Sue Ellen were having a good conversation about the implications of a ferry marshalling scheme that would build a road right through the heron rookery, in contravention of all kinds of regulations and guidelines.  Janice pinballed back and forth from link to link reading regulations and guidelines and planning advice and reporting on her findings and so on and concluded with a question that she asked Sue Ellen that never got answered.  The thread petered off with Janice continuing to find more questions but Sue Ellen was no longer around to answer.

The reason Sue Ellen didn't answer is because in the middle of the thread she left the Forum.  With no evidence at all, Andrew P. concluded that "There appears...to be no provincial or federal prohibiting (sic) BIM building a road as proposed in Plan Z."  He then lobbed out one of his common allegations of people spreading misinformation about the herons: 

"All development anywhere near the heron nests would/should take place off season and have as large as possible set backs. Signs could be placed along the loop road asking people to keep it down. Wonder if there are any signs along the park trails of that sort right now?  

This is the kind of thinking that appears to have been thwarted by misinformation on our responsibilities in relation to the herons."

Sue Ellen, who is a smart person and a nationally renowned naturalist, just walked away from that.  What can you do with someone who draws his own erroneous conclusions from a discussion and then accuses others of misinformation?  Especially as he Googled "Great Blue Heron" and found out that the birds weren't protected at all!

He googled the wrong species.  The Great Blue Heron in general is not protected in Canada, but the Coastla Blue Heron is.  And so he was really quite wrong on this.

But somehow it crept into the public consciousness that we had had a good old discussion on herons and the conclusion, laid bare by all the facts, was that the vast regulatory scheme that Canada and BC have to protect herons was a fiction.  Andrew posted today:

It’s one thing to express your opinion. It’s another thing to misrepresent the facts and the law, when you know or should know that what you are stating is incorrect. Of course I refer to the rules; regulations regarding development in the midst of “potential” or “historic” heron nesting locations.  

My opinion is that the signs were installed to lend credence to the patently false position that was promulgated as truth for so long, and was soundly debunked by Janice some while back. Go ahead and ask the GVRD guys who wanted the signs installed. I did.

And I guess all I am saying is that a) Janice did not debunk anything, she simply read widely and never made a conclusion and b) Andrew did make a conclusion by doing research that included Googling the wrong bird and c) turns out there are signs there after all and d) the "position" is not false.

I'm not posting on the forum anymore, but for my friends that read it, it's worth pointing out, if it matters to you, that Andrew is wrong about the herons, and those who have imagined that Janice concluded that the federal and provincial governments have no regulatory scheme that would prevent a road being put through the nesting area of a Blue Listed species are also wrong, both about Janice's conclusions and the regulatory framework.  She didn't debunk anything and she never claimed the certainty that Andrew ascribes to her.

Why does this matter?  Because people like Andrew have been using the heron discussion as an illustration of "fact based" decision making on Bowen Island.   The truth is that the heron debates contained all kinds of facts and in conclusion, it is clear that the Coastal Great Blue Heron is protected and there are guidelines and regulations (and even a local procedure) to comply with before you mess with them.  Janic herself never debunked anything, and nothing was shown to be false.  Andrew made some conclusions and labelled those that didn't agree with him as spreading "misinformation."

Council can make any decision it wants about ferry marshalling, but if they get fined for violating a species protection regulation, I wonder who will be invited to pay?  That s what experts are for: to help people make complicated decisions that are outside of their realm of experience.  Andrew is no expert on herons, and neither is Janice.  But at least she took the time to ask a resident expert, and respected her opinion.

(Edited to remove the surname of an individual who requested it.)

Underneath the Lintel is a masterpiece

Friday night we went up to the Tir Na Nog theatre school where Kingbaby Productions was mounting a new play, Underneath The Lintel.  David Cameron plays a Dutch librarian whose charming character seems firmly stuck in the middle of the 20th century.  Starting with a book that is returned 113 years overdue, the librarian becomes obsessed with a series of small clues that convince him he is on the trail of the legendary Wandering Jew.

I have seen David in probably 10 productions over the years and this is my favourite character.  The play has an edge of magical realism that requires the audience to be drawn in close.  the Librarian does this like a magician with intrigue and the slow exposition of the long chain of clues and evidence he has uncovered.  One by one small curios are produced from a trunk which move the story along from one improbable connection to the next.

As the story unfolds and goes deeper though, you begin to peer into the Librarians heart, and see the petty obsessions he holds, the regrets, the joys and the well meant intentions that have marked a life that culminates in this search.  David is magnificent at pulling us in, having spent months growing a proper vandyke goatee and hanging around Thuys Dhont, one of Bowen's ubiquitous Dutch ex pats.

The production runs next weekend as well, and then Kingbaby aim to tour the play on the Fringe circuit this year.  Go and see it if you can.  Even if you live in Vancouver, the play is over in time for you to return on the last ferry.  It's worth the trip to Bowen.

Good ideas die at the intersection of pride and ego.

The municipality has released its plan for consultations on the ferry marshalling changes it wants to make in the village.

The plan is very basic...we will take our proposals to business owners one on one and have some Open House meetings where we will answer questions.  It is a typical "tell and sell" strategy, and it's a shame.

There were a number of plans developed on previous years that were far more inclusive designs.  The best set were the Snug Cove concepts prepared in 2010 by JWT Architecture and Planning.  These plans were interesting in a number of ways.  First they were based on a through design process that took into account constraints and precedents and they were co-created with the major stakeholders, including Metro Vancouver and BC Ferries.  They integrated ferry marshalling with village planning so that traffic solutions could be achieved at the same time as improving the village.  The designers chose 16 key design principles, and offered four different solutions that took into account every ferry marshalling study done to that point.  The four options were offered up to the community for review and comment, and the site even walked people through a process for choosing which elements were most important.  I believe that it it came up with four solid designs, only one of which I liked (option A), but I and many others said that we could live with any of the four.  Such was the integrity of the process.

All that needed to happen to put these designs into play was a costing exercise and some policy changes.  Unfortunately we had a new "action oriented" Council elected in 2011 who vowed to have nothing to do with anything the previous Council had engaged in.  In the name of doing something, they commissioned a ferry marshalling design that was not done with any consultation and which missed a number of key constraints.  There is a useful discussion on this option on the forum here, the quality of which survives until Andrew P. starts launching vitriol at Sue Ellen Fast.  You can scroll through that garbage and see some of James Tuer's posts about what went into the concepts and why other plans should be given the same treatment.

in contrast, this new plan was designed in workshops with Councillors, staff and a couple of committees.  There was no public consultation or stakeholder engagement.  The design principles are more of a wish list rather than design constraints and it makes no reference whatsoever to previous plans, to other precedents or to a range of options.  It is not a village improvement plan, but rather a traffic solution.  It is not at all sensitive to the human and natural context.  The analysis on previous plans  goes like this:

"Improvement plans for the Snug Cove Village, the Government Road Corridor, and ferry marshalling improvements have been under discussion in Bowen Island for the past decade. Considerable resources have been expended on exploring options that could be pursued, and in reviewing these options with the community. For a number of reasons, none of these options have ultimately been implemented."

That's it.  

The public Consultation recommendation in the original plan says this:

It is proposed that staff and consultants be directed to hold a Public Open House at which the Government Road Corridor Improvements and ferry marshalling improvements be presented for the community’s information.

That's it.  The fleshing out of that contains no surprises.

So we are about to embark on a five phase development of the Government Road corridor based on a cursory design process, with no stakeholder collaboration, with a financial plan that is based on conservative estimates (of $5.5 million) that don't account for a number of unknowns and that will make irreversible changes to the village with no village planning.  It doesn't take into consideration the overall design of the village at all.  It is a road works project. This is unwise and unnecessary because we have four plans that could do an incredible job of marshalling ferry traffic AND improving the village.

The solution is unsafe.  Ten years ago when we had centre lane marshalling, the through lane was a dangerous place for children and was absolutely hair raising for drivers, especially as people were returning to their cars ready to load. It only too a few days before someone was hit by a car.

I hope the business owners, when they are consulted, urge the Council to return to the JWT concepts.  I hope somebody will have the sense to realize that this road works project is not the village revitalization that we need.  

But I know this Council to be stubborn and completely in love with its own sense of forward thinking initiatives.  What will happen now is that a number of detractors will urge a more comprehensive and integrated approach, Tim Rhodes, Andrew P., Richard Goth and others will perhaps malign them and associate them with the sins of previous Councils.  

And God forbid if they go ahead with this monstrosity, I wonder if they will find a way to blame previous Councils for the inevitable cost overruns, safety issues and general ugliness of the whole thing?

So I don't know what to say.  The consultation (really just information sharing) will report back to Council that there are a few concerns but that we should go ahead with this anyway.  Refinements will not save this thing or make it better.

I know what I want.  I think we should continue with the good process that was started in 2010.  We should return to the Snug Cove Concepts and cost out Option A.  We should make the policy changes necessary to implement it, continue to work together with BC Ferries, Metro Vancouver and the business owners and get to work creating the next iteration of our village.  

(Edited to remove the surname of an individual who requested it.) 

Living under a winter high

 

Just beautiful weather here the last week.  We have been living under a high pressure system that is forcing some wonderful meterological phenomena.  Notably, the high pressure traps cold air near the sea and creates an inversion, meaning that the moisture can't escape and form clouds, so it lingers at sea level forming think banks of fog that fill the Strait of Greorgia and Parts of Howe Sound.

Last night the fog bansk were as thick as they can get and all night long we were treated to the soothing symphony of dozens of different fog horns sounding out in the dark.  the Point Atkinson lighthouse, which is miles away at the entrance to English Bay has a classic two tone deep "eeeee-ooooo" and the whistles and horns from moving ships in the night answered the call.

This morning in the bright sunshine on Bowen, the fog did it's best to fill the Sound, but we somehow escaped the cool, and we are being treated to an incredible display of light and blue sky and grey fog flowing in from the Strait.

Yesterday, the kids and I went skiing at Cypress and the view from Mount Strachan shows the way the fog coats the city and eases part way into Howe Sound.  It made for beautiful views, and a gorgeous sunset.

Winter sunrises

All week we've been treated to sunrises like this. Red sky and pink sea. Warm and stormless January continues.