Plans for Jumbo Glacier Resort quashed
Development must start again after environmental certificate expired
The controversial Jumbo Glacier Resort project in the Kootenays will have to start from scratch in gaining environmental approval after the Environment Ministry ruled the project had not been substantially started before its certificate expired.
“They would have to start from the very beginning,” Environment Minister Mary Polak said in a conference call Thursday afternoon of the resort, which is planned as a year-round ski development in the Jumbo Creek valley, 55 kilometres west of Invermere. “It would be as though they had never been through an assessment before.”
But project proponent Tommaso Oberti of Glacier Resorts Ltd. is not calling it quits, saying the company plans on moving ahead with “everything we can, of course.”
Oberti said they are reviewing the decision and plan to speak with the ministry during the next few days, along with Glacier’s board of directors.
Oberti said he doesn’t understand the ministry’s reasoning.
“There are many balls in the air, from an appeal to litigation to a new application, or a request for an amendment to the original environmental certificate,” he said. “Jumbo Glacier Resort would be the premier ski destination on the continent, and the recent poor winter showed us why, in the age of global warming, new ski resorts should be built at appropriate elevations and in the right climate zones.”
Polak said her ministry was required to make a determination because the Environmental Assessment Act requires all approved projects be substantially started within the time limit set out in the certificate.
The resort, which has been repeatedly challenged in court by First Nations and environmental groups, received its first environmental certificate in 2004. It was extended in 2009, with an expiry date of Oct. 12, 2014, but the extension document stated all approved projects must be “substantially started” under provincial law within the time limit set out, something Polak said hasn’t happened.
According to a government document, Phase 1 of the project was to have included, among other things, a Glacier Dome gondola, two chairlifts in Jumbo Valley, a mountaintop refuge, a base day lodge, a main resort day lodge, bed and breakfast establishments, 30 townhouse condominiums and 25 chalets.
“While it is clear that some construction has started, I was not convinced that the physical activity undertaken as of Oct. 12, 2014 meets the threshold of a substantially started project,” said Polak.
She said completed work she viewed during an Oct. 11 visit included first-floor slab and foundation preparations for the day lodge at the resort base, firstfloor slab for the service building at the resort base, foundation anchors for the departure station of a quad chair lift, two bridges including a temporary bridge on a forest service road, a well, 250 metres of construction access road within the resort base, and other improvements including ditch maintenance.
She said while it’s impossible to give a hard date on how long it would take to get a new environmental certificate, “we do have timelines set out that seek to provide a (certificate) within 180 days. There’s every likelihood that reports and assessments would have to be significantly updated depending on what they were to make sure that no new conditions had occurred.”
Polak said that in making her determination she considered, among other things, submissions from Glacier Resorts, the Ktunaxa Nation Council and the Shuswap Indian Band.
She said the Shuswap band had an agreement with Glacier in terms of benefit sharing, “so I think we could conclude that they were generally supportive of the project.”
However, she noted, the Ktunaxa Nation Council was strongly opposed to the project, largely because of the cultural and spiritual significance of the area.