By Brian Lee
I’m conflicted over the draft dock management plan for Pender Harbour. I accept that there may be too many docks in Pender Harbour and see how many more there could be. There are still plenty of waterfront properties without docks, stacked along the shoreline in places like Gerrans Bay, that are 50 feet wide. It is absurd to expect that every property along Pender’s 60-kilometre shoreline deserves a private dock.
On the other hand, the province’s dock management plan is lazy work. It’s like sitting down at a restaurant and being told by your waiter that a couple sitting three tables away has ordered for you.
"Why?" you ask.
"Because they were here before you," he replies in a hushed tone.
"But it doesn’t make any sense."
"Well, they were here before you and are unhappy with their last meal so to make up for it, I told them they could order for you."
"But I still have to pay for it?"
"Yes, of course."
"I’m allergic to gluten."
"Sorry, it’s already cooking."
I was a kid who spent quite a bit of time fishing off Pender docks. Why? It was where the fish were. And the mussels I used for bait. It’s also where heron fish, seagulls rest and otters poop.
We can now minimize herring spawn mortality with herring curtains. Where’s best to place them? Docks.
But I also understand the concept of photosynthesis and am willing to accept that docks may cast a shadow of death on the bottom below. But, please, show me the science.
It frustrates me sometimes, but our SCRD board wouldn’t consider a decision of such consequence without a Hallowellian stack of consultants’ reports to base it on. Their decision might also be long in coming but there would be evidence showing how they came to it In this case, the affected have 30 days to comment on a plan 12 years in the making with only 11 vague pages of information to go on.
If our waiter and the couple three tables over have concerns about death shadows under Pender Harbour’s docks, tell us more. How about a bathymetrical model of the Harbour showing the properties affected by the 1.5-metre dock height at low tide requirement.
And if docks are that destructive, for God’s sake, why aren’t we mobilizing to save Secret Cove and Porpoise Bay? And why is there no mention of the mega-death shadows cast by boathouses?
It all seems a little colonial for strangers to arrive with vague maps segregating our community into territories of haves, have-nots and riparian communalism and assume we natives will happily believe these missing details are nothing to worry about.
We expect more and clearly the Sechelt Indian Band and the province staff got it wrong. But should that surprise anyone? They don’t live here. The people who do, the people who are impacted by the plan, hold generations of local knowledge about Pender Harbour. So why were they left out?
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