Re: Toquart Bay access to Broken Group closed
ken_vandeburgt said:
Where would that deep water port facility be ??? Toquart Bay ... too bad about the port facility currently being used as a recreation site. Arsenic? Yeah, we've known about that for some time. Why is it now an issue?
Just to deepen the conspiracy theory, I was reading over the press release of the closing of the campsite and found this telling, bold/italic text is to highlight the salient point:
"The former forest recreation site at Toquaht Bay was developed for public recreation after the closure of the Brynnor Mine in the late 1960s. The recreation site was Crown land until it was transferred to the Toquaht Nation as part of the Maa-nulth Treaty, which came into effect on April 1, 2011. In the treaty, the Province agreed to undertake environmental inspections and, if necessary, remediate any contamination at the site to identified land-use standards
if and when the Toquaht Nation decided to further develop the site. The road leading to the boat launch, and the launch itself, remain Crown land."
So clearly the band does have intentions for further development, and I think simply expanding or improving the campsite wouldn't prompt an environmental inspection -- it would have to be something substantially more involved for that to kick in. So ask yourself: if you were owner of a campsite that you wanted to develop into a mine, would this not be the politically expedient way to do it: close the campsite on the premise of a health risk so you're appearing to do users a favour, relocate it to inferior Location B to appear to do users a favour, then bring the mining operation on stream over time so no one really notices? The last part would be to make the mining operation integral to the site cleanup so at the end of the mine's lifespan you can say the site will be cleaner than ever so you appear to do users a favour.
Not saying that's the case, just that the pieces fit. If the Toquart band simply announced the closure of the campsite to accommodate a mine the backlash would be huge, possibly enough to kill the project, so it makes sense there would be some brainstorming on how to mitigate bad press. And this would be the perfect solution...