Environmental permit process survives tight vote
An environmental permitting program of dubious value was granted a stay of execution on Thursday.
Rural directors on the board of the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen voted 5-3 in favour of maintaining the environmentally sensitive development permit process as it is.
Opposing votes were cast by Directors Mark Pendergraft (Area A), Tim Roberts (Area G) and Rick Knodel (Area C). George Bush (Area B) was absent for the vote.
The vote had the effect of rescinding planned changes to the program that were the subject of a public hearing in December 2023.
The program is “currently not as efficient as it should be. That’s been made very clear,” said Subrina Monteith, the director for Area I (Skaha West/Twin Lakes/Kaleden/Apex), who voted in favour of maintaining it.
“But we need to have something. And until we have something better at the table, I’m not going to remove the only tool we have.”
Under the existing process, property owners who apply for building permits, subdivisions or other developments on land with conservation interests, such as wildlife habitat, have to acquire an additional environmentally sensitive development permit by hiring a biologist to review plans and recommend mitigation measures.
According to consulting firm Stantec, which was hired last year by the federal government to review the program, 236 such permits were issued between 2017 and 2022, at a cost that ranged from $1,000 to $8,000 for the biology work alone.
But the firm was unable to say whether it did any good.
“During Stantec’s review, it was found that records of monitoring during site construction, or post-development follow-up were generally absent, meaning there was little to no information to use in this regard to understand whether the mitigation measures proposed by (biologists) during the ESDP process were effective,” concluded the report.
“While mitigation measures and recommendations for environmental protection were made during ESDP applications, the absence of monitoring reports means that the effectiveness of the issued ESDPs in mitigating impacts of development is unclear, and this question cannot be definitively answered at this time.”
RDOS staff had proposed amending the program so it applies to subdivisions only, but that died with the motion to rescind.
Knodel, who was on the losing side of the vote, suggested the issue is more polarized than local politicians thought.
“I’ve heard just as loudly from my residents that they don’t want (the ESDP system) in its current form,” said Knodel.
“It’s not serving the purpose and it’s unnecessarily costing them considerable amounts of money.”