Volunteers tackle cleanup of derelict boats
Volunteers unwilling to wait for government action have mobilized to clean up 10 or more derelict boats despoiling the Oak Bay side of Cadboro Bay.
They plan to gather on May 13 for the cleanup, and are especially concerned about a 36-foot-long steel-hulled wreck.
There were 16 wrecks just a few weeks back, but owners appear to have dragged some if them away, said Eric Dahli of the Cadboro Bay Residents Association, who has spearheaded the removal.
Abandoned and unsafe vessels and wrecks are under overlapping federal, provincial and municipal jurisdictions, depending on the tide lines.
MPs voted unanimously Oct. 26 on a Liberal motion to give the federal government six months to address derelict boats that threaten waterways across Canada, Nanaimo-Ladysmith NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson said. That deadline arrived on April 26. But, Malcolmson said, “we have yet to see any money budgeted, legislation tabled, or mechanisms identified to deal with abandoned vessels.”
Malcolmson has tabled bill C-352 to start a vessel turn-in program that she said would create green jobs in marine-salvage businesses.
The province should take over vessel registration, she said, to “end the run-around and fingerpointing by designating [the Canadian] Coast Guard as the agency responsible for directing the removal and recycling of abandoned vessels,” her website states.
In an interview with the Times Colonist, she said that federal oversight of vessel registration has “fallen into deep disrepair,” suggesting the provincial government take over registration in much the same way that it deals with the sale of used cars — “and we don’t have old abandoned cars lying around like we used to.”
A provincial registration fee could help cover the cost of vessel disposal, she said.
Malcolmson said when she was chair of the Islands Trust, she met several times with B.C. cabinet ministers on the issue of derelict boats, at one point leading a delegation of 19 local governments trying to get action. But after 10 years of pressing the issue, “we never had a piece of responsible action,” she said. “It’s very disappointing.”
As for Cadboro Bay, helping make the May 13 cleanup happen are Cadboro Bay and Oak Bay residents associations, Royal Victoria Yacht Club and The Veins of Life Watershed Society.
Some of the Oak Bay wrecks are half in provincial jurisdiction — the intertidal zone — and others are in Oak Bay’s bailiwick given that at low tide, there is nothing to stop children from reaching the wrecks, Dahli said.