PALMER: ALL DOWNHILL FOR SKI RESORT
Major setback: A quarter-century, eight premiers and one deadline extension later, it’s back to square one
After 2½ decades of reviews under eight premiers, the B.C. government has sent the proposal to develop a $1-billion ski resort at the Jumbo Glacier site west of Invermere back to square one.
Environment Minister Mary Polak did the deed Thursday, exercising her statutory authority to determine that the developer had not met the written-into-law test of having got the development “substantially” underway within 10 years of securing approval under the provincial environmental assessment process.
While conceding that the decision was a judgment call on her part — determinations are made on a “case-by-case” basis and “no specific formula” is set out in law — Polak nevertheless insisted that it was the only outcome possible.
She drew on submissions from her ministry, the proponent and two First Nations whose territories overlap with the site, backstopped by her own visit to the site on the eve of last October’s expiry of the statutory deadline.
Pressed by reporters, she described seeing a first-floor slab for a couple of buildings, foundation anchors for a quad chair lift, some bridges, a well, and work-in-progress on roads and site clearing.
Against that you had her ministry’s survey of the promised elements of the first phase of the project, including one gondola, two chairlifts, three glacier lifts, a mountaintop restaurant, two day lodges, a sewage treatment plant, and extensive overnight accommodations.
“This does not mean that progress is required on every element of the Phase 1 but it is a useful comparator in considering the substantial nature of work completed,” wrote Polak in the reasons for decision. “While it is clear that some construction has been started, I am not convinced that the physical activity undertaken on the various components meets the threshold of a substantially started project.”
She took note of a complication brought on by her own ministry, which earlier this year advised the company that the buildings already under construction were “outside of compliance” with the environmental approval certificate because they were located in avalanche paths.
“I have concluded that even if these partly constructed structures were weighted fully, the work undertaken would still not be sufficient to meet the substantially started threshold,” she wrote.
Further emphasizing that she had no choice, Polak noted that the initial environmental approval certificate was issued in October 2004. Then in 2009, the project was granted the one fiveyear extension permitted in law, which is the deadline crossed last October, setting the stage for the determination she reached this week.
In short, the proponent did not appear to have made the most of the 10 years accorded him to get the project substantially underway. Likely there were other factors in the decision to proceed slowly, not least the declared opposition of one of the two First Nations whose territory overlapped with the site.
“Whether or not the project is dead, that is up to the proponent,” Polak told reporters. But she didn’t dispute that the only option would be to “begin the environmental approval process again” — meaning from scratch.
And so B.C. can likely say farewell to the touted $1 billion worth of investment, several thousand construction jobs, an estimated 700 permanent jobs, and a unique tourist attraction.
“We have the potential here in this province to build something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in North America,” cabinet minister Bill Bennett, the project’s staunchest defender, told the legislature earlier this year. “There is no high-elevation ski resort — skiing on glaciers — anywhere in North America. It doesn’t exist — it would exist if the resort was built at Jumbo.”
In a province where proposals to build anything, anywhere near anybody — mines, pipelines, resorts, power projects, port expansions, you name it — will usually summon up a ready-made coalition bent on making sure nothing ever goes ahead, this week’s development will be celebrated as good news in the usual quarters.
But if Jumbo Glacier fails to rise from the grave that Polak dug for it Thursday, the bad news implications have been well identified by her own cabinet colleagues.
“Our government believes that 20 years is long enough and that this project should be going forward, because this side of the house believes in growing the economy,” said local government minister Coralee Oakes last year, defending the decision to jump-start the project by establishing it as a stand-alone resort municipality with a cabinet-appointed council and $200,000 in provincial start-up money. “We believe in jobs. We believe in growing the economy. And this project is good for B.C.”
Whatever one thinks of the merits of the proposal, there’s the telling fact that the project was first submitted for provincial government consideration in early 1991, when Bill Vander Zalm was still premier of B.C.
“The twists and turns in government process over the years on this project are a disgrace,” as Minister Bennett once put it. “All members should be embarrassed by the unjust way that this proponent has been forced to tread water for years by both political parties in this house.”
Bennett wasn’t commenting Thursday. He said that in 2011. But the words are no less applicable today. Would-be investors take note.