"Watch for falling rock" on the 2010 Games

This happened just across the water from me last night : a cliff face collapsed onto the Sea-to-Sky highway and the rail line between Vancouver and Whistler.

75 meters of what will be the route to the 2010 Olympic Games is buried in rubble 10 meters deep and will take at least five days to remove.

We must have heard it but as there has been blasting over there every night between midnight and 2am for weeks now, no one would have thought much about it. I wonder if all that blasting had anything to do with loosening that cliff face? In addition to the earthquake in California yesterday, another one in Port Townsend today, and the fact it rained all day yesterday for the first time in weeks. But about all that blasting and road construction ...

2010 Games boosters were immediately on damage control :

Premier Gordo Campbell :

"This is an area that was not touched by the improvements that we're making."

Ministry of Transportation spokesman Dave Crebo :

"The area where the slide occurred is not part of the $600-million Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project, so it has not been worked on recently by construction crews."

That's $775 million, actually, guys, with blasting on that mountainside every single night.

B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon :

"There's no need to worry about a similar incident during the 2010 Winter Olympics. I'm very confident we'll have a situation in place to deal with these things," he said. "We will have contingency plans."

Colin Hansen, minister responsible for the Games :

"It's one of the reasons there are two separate athletes' villages -- one in Whistler and one in Vancouver."

VANOC VP of services and transportation Irene Kerr :

"A slide during the Olympics would not ruin the games."

Yeah but it could totally ruin the day of anyone caught under 1600 cubic metres of rubble, couldn't it, Irene?

"To mitigate any short-term transportation challenges between Vancouver and Whistler, athletes, officials, and the majority of personnel required to stage an Olympic or Paralympic event in Whistler will be housed in the Whistler area, so events will proceed on schedule."

Well, events proceeding on schedule is the most important thing about a rockslide I guess.

And 'short term transportation challenges'?

You mean like the bus driver who thankfully had the wit to floor it out of there as the rockslide smashed into his bus?

So far no one has been reported trapped in the slide - the dog patrols are out sniffing now - but this is a notoriously dangerous highway : 14 major landslides in the last century, with 19 deaths and over 800 accidents in the last five years alone. A rock slide in 1996 was 60,000 cubic meters and another in 1990 took two weeks to clear.

Well you know I'm not a huge fan of the two week Five Ring Circus urban renewal project and I'm bound to be crabby about this so let's hear from a professional - geologist Colin Smith with Vancouver-based Fundamental Research Corp :

"The Sea to Sky Highway route in the Porteau Cove area is one of the worst possible places to build a road. In fact, Tuesday's slide near Porteau Cove may have weakened surrounding rock structures to the point of making a future slide in the same area more likely."

but, but, but ... Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said, "There's going to be a lot of rock-bolting ... and we will have all the contingencies and eventualities in place."

Colin Smith :

"I don't think rock-bolting really would have done a whole lot," he said.
"Over time there's not a whole lot you can do, especially when you exploit the weakness by undercutting the structure with the road."

Oh look, here's Crebo, spokesman for the Transport Ministry again :

"The slide was "nowhere near" roadwork on the highway."

Meanwhile 15,000 to 20,000 people are stranded in what the papers have taken to calling "the affluent alpine village of Whistler" for the next five days.

Now what was that again about "an imaginative combination of road, rail, marine and air" options in our bid for the Olympics again?

PNWER and Cascadia

"I think there is a very strong, natural pull of the region called Cascadia," Premier Gordon Campbell says in an article on the Discovery Institute website last year.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, rather better known for its crusade to teach intelligent design/creationism in schools, is a Cascadia partner with PNWER, a US-Canada public-private sector regional lobby group composed of legislators and business leaders from Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, B.C., Alberta, and the Yukon Territory. They are sponsored in this endeavor by Exxon, Enbridge, Encana, British Petroleum, Terasen, Cominco, - well, you get the general idea.

Gordon Campbell is hosting this year's PNWER event starting Sunday July 20 at the Bayshore. Speakers include Stockwell Day, Gary Lunn, Monte Solberg, US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, Canadian Ambassador to the US Michael Wilson, and industry stakeholders.

So let's hear it from the fans :

Premier Gordon Campbell : "Working together means we're working on both sides of the border to achieve our goals."

Stockwell Day : "PNWER has had a profound impact on policymaking."

PNWER executive director American Matt Morrison on TILMA : “We did have something to do with the B.C.-Alberta agreement, which I think is a great model that needs to be expanded."

Gosh, I guess that means PNWER is to TILMA what CCCE was to the SPP.

To follow the money : a great post at Owls and Roosters.

P-3s - Plundering the Public Pocketbook

Vaughn Palmer tells us in The Vancouver Sun that Macquarie Infrastructure Group or MIG, one of the largest toll road companies in the world, is the "main player" in the P-3 bid to build a second span beside the Port Mann Bridge and widen 37kms of the TransCanada Highway :

Vetting will be done by the Ministry of Highways and Partnerships B.C., the provincial agency for overseeing P3s. The process will be scrutinized by an independent fairness adviser, put there to oversee the public interest in equal treatment of all three bidders.

"Oversee the public interest"? That's very amusing, Vaughn.
Does this mean Macquarie is no longer on the Partnerships BC payroll then?

In 2001, Macquarie was asked to write a report about the feasibility of going ahead with RAV as a P3. The verdict was favourable. Subsequently, Macquarie was retained by Partnerships BC to continue to advise it in regard to the commercial and financial aspects of RAV while at the same time, [Macquarie was] bidding on Sea to Sky.

A bid they were successful in securing, I might add - Macquarie is project manager of the Sea to Sky Highway.

Vaughn goes on to say : "The B.C. Liberals are perhaps hoping to avoid the kind of controversy that has dogged one of these players in Texas."

Quite.
According to Manufacturing and Technology News, Macquarie has been recently accused of financing Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani through a shell law firm. When there was public outcry against the privatization of the public roads in Texas, Macquerie spent $110M buying up 42 local newspapers along the proposed Texas Corridor, also known as the southern end of the NAFTA Superhighway.

From Manufacturing and Technology News, here's how this P-3 scam works south of the border :

"What I think has happened is that "read-my-lips" George Bush Sr. couldn't figure a way to operate government without raising taxes. His son solved the problem by radically increasing the national debt, borrowing primarily from the central banks of other nations.

Now, we have a new generation of Republicans who say I'll cut taxes, and I'll never raise taxes. They intend to finance their promise by selling off the public infrastructure. What the public doesn't understand and what the media is not explaining is that the private operations of our public infrastructure represents the highest tax you can possibly have because those investors are going to run up the prices they charge to the limit and under the binding contracts these "no-new-tax" governors are signing, we have no democratic alternative for dealing with these contracts."

"If you are a governor and you need $3 billion, $4 billion or $5 billion to finance state government and you have a heavily trafficked route, these private companies will come in and pay the state the money and you're all of a sudden flush with cash. They will put together a package and their teams of lawyers will come in to work with you on what you need to do to change your state constitution and change your laws.

If you need to do a referendum, they will help you finance and run the referendum. They'll lobby the state legislature and the local media. To streamline all of this, the U.S. Department of Transportation is working with them state by state on privatizing public roads."

Ask not for whom the road tolls...

Tsawwassen two-step

BC NeoLib Gordon Campbell's settlement with the Tsawwassen band is a travesty.
And now both the BC NDP and the BC Green Party have given it their blessing.

What's wrong with it?
Couple of things ...
1)The 207 hectares of farmland to come out of the Agricultural Land Reserve via the band. It is to be paved over to park containers for Campbell's pet Roberts Bank Deltaport expansion.
2)Campbell's disregard of both DFO and Environment Canada reports on likely damage to Fraser River salmon and wildlife, including adjacent Burns Bog
3)The $15,000 cash payout to select elders from Campbell upon ratification
4)The stacked voting :
From FN activist Bertha Williams prior to the vote :

"The chief and council of our band ... use such trickery as an “enrollment application” in order to vote on the treaty. In the application there is a section where we have to relinquish our claim to our inherent rights.
If we don’t enroll, we are not allowed to vote. This would pave the way for a more secure “yes” vote."

The First Nations people involved should never have been put in this terrible position, but I don't want to hear the words "green" or "sustainability" or "stewardship of the earth" out of the NDP or the Greens again for a long long time.



UPDATE : The other side of this coin. From Chris in comments :

"TFN has been hollaring for years about the damage in the estuary to fish stocks and migratory birds, but they were dismissed for decades as lunatics. When everyone else was ignoring the damage of Roberts Bank and the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, TFN was on top of it. When they eventually built the development at Tsatsu shores (without the city of Delta letting them hook up into their sewar system) to create some economic development for the band, everyone screamed about how they had destroyed the environmental conditions of Roberts Bank.

TFN is completely surrounded by agricultural, special Crown and private land. I am a supporter of the ALR, but First Nations were never consulted when it was created, in violation of now established Aboriginal rights. If TFN is to be a viable community, they need more land. What are the options?

It strikes me as funny that the people who oppose this treaty are quoting a "First Nations activist", Bertha Williams. It's as if there is a need to find the "activist" in the community and support her position, regardless of what she is saying. The irony is that the TFN were one of the most politically active bands for decades, trying to get the surrounding communities of Delta and Ladner to pay attention to them. They never garnered much support then, when Kim Biard and her predecessors were confronting the red neck citizens of Ladner and Delta. Now they are somehow sell-outs and pariahs?

As for the link to the Tyee story by Rafe Mair (I mean, c'mon, Rafe Mair?) there is a good reason for allowing non-residents of TFN to vote: they are citizens and Aboriginal rights are held collectively by the citizens of a Nation, not the residents of a reserve. Why shouldn't the governments be on the hook for helping the enrolment vote take place? The reserve system and federal and provincial policies divided First Nations communities in the first place, and having TFN hemmed in by developments and land designations that they never had a say in means that there is limited ability for all Nation members to be on reserve.

The TFN agreement may not be the model of sustainability and the provincial government's plans for Deltaport may be egregious, but it strikes me that one of the best reasons for a treaty is that it finally involves the greenest party of the three in the mix, and, based on their track record, I trust TFN infinitely more than any other level of government to steward the land properly. Given all the damage done there already, it's a tough job, but finally the future of south Delta includes one sane voice in the mix of development-crazy mayors, politicians and CEOs.

I wish them the best of luck "