Special protection extended for White Lake’s observatory

An out-of-this-world agreement right in the South Okanagan’s backyard is among the few land-use contracts that won’t expire in B.C. next summer.

The issue of land-use contracts has been in the news recently in Penticton, where redevelopment of the Bogner’s restaurant site into an office building has been delayed due to the existence of one such agreement that precludes other uses.

The proponents appeared before city council last week to ask that the land-use contract be killed immediately, rather than waiting until its natural termination date next summer. Council voted 4-3 to go along with the plan following a heated 90-minute public hearing.

Land-use contracts were used in B.C. between 1971 and 1978 as a form of site-specific zoning, but were phased out of legislation after that. It wasn’t until 2014 that the B.C. government announced all such contracts will be considered terminated as of June 30, 2024.

The effort to phase out land-use contracts was inspired partly by the documents’ own ability to supersede local zoning bylaws – as is the case with Bogner’s restaurant – that could prove advantageous to developers but not the community.

The 10-year delay was meant to give local governments time to prepare by beefing up their zoning bylaws where necessary.

That has proven easier said than done with the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, which has operated in the White Lake basin south of Penticton under terms of a land-use contract since 1973.

The cutting-edge facility, which is operated by the National Research Council, boasts a fleet of radio telescopes that benefit from the site’s location in a natural bowl that blocks out some radio interference.

Just this week, the B.C. government tabled legislation that would extend DRAO’s landuse contract to 2034 — 10 years after the other contracts automatically expire.

“The proposed legislation will permit the extension of a unique land-use contract within the Regional District of OkanaganSimilkameen, which minimizes disruption to the observatory by limiting the number of nearby housing developments and by placing restrictions on household electrical devices that could cause radio-frequency interference,” explained the B.C. government in a press release.

“The proposed legislation responds to a request by the federal government and is supported by the Regional District of OkanaganSimilkameen. Twenty-one First Nations were consulted about the proposal to extend the land-use contract.”

The legislation also contains a provision requiring the RDOS to come up with appropriate zoning for the DRAO site by June 30, 2032, which would allow the land-use contract to expire naturally two years later.

RDOS chief administrative officer Bill Newell said in an email Tuesday the land-use contract provides DRAO with more protection “against development within a certain perimeter that may increase radio signals that would interfere with their operations that a typical zoning bylaw can not duplicate.”

But according to a staff report on the subject presented to the RDOS board in 2020, there were “a number of concerns” with extending the land-use contract.

Those concerns included only 2.6% of the DRAO site actually being covered by the agreement, which is therefore “not seen to be an effective, long-term tool for ensuring the whole of the (radio frequency interference) area is protected from uses that might cause interference with the observatory’s operations.”

Staff also expressed uncertainty about the effect of the land-use contract on unfinished phases of the nearby by St. Andrews community and about the RDOS’s authority to enforce bans on electronic devices that produce radio interference.

DRAO’s flagship radio telescope is the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, the antenna of which consists of four steel half-pipes wrapped in wire mesh that together form an array approximately the size of six NHL rinks.

CHIME continuously observes the sky as the Earth rotates and is designed to pick up radio waves emitted by hydrogen in the very earliest stages of the universe.

Since being switched on in 2017, CHIME has made headlines around the world for detecting fast radio bursts — an intensely strong burst of radio waves of unknown astrophysical origin, which typically lasts for a few milliseconds at most.