Anyone strolling along the waterfront pathway at Cape Roger Curtis will see that, despite all the public discontent, one large dock already juts into the ocean from the high ground above the foreshore. A trip to the beach at Cape Roger Curtis offers a view of another future dock. These structures are forged from metal and concrete. They're not going anywhere, the deal is done. Owen Plowman, President of the Bowen Island Conservancy says the case of the "dock bylaw" is far from closed, and there is much more to lose than Cape Roger Curtis.
"When the application for construction of the docks at Cape Roger Curtis came in, there was no bylaw regulating dock construction," says Plowman. "Which means they could've built docks even longer than they did, so long as the Province granted the approval. Cape Roger Curtis is the front and centre issue where this has been brought to a head, but these regulations are about Bowen's whole shoreline."
Petitions and actions by the Stop the Dock Campaign, which Plowman says his group is not directly related to, but with which his group shares a number of ideas and values, forced council to set in motion the process of updating the Municipal Land-Use Bylaw (# ) to include dock construction.
Plowman says the purpose of this process is to protect the environment, but also to protect the "public interest." In this case, he describes the public interest as access to and enjoyment of the island's shoreline and beaches.
"There have been various statements over the past few months saying this regulation is interfering with private property rights. It certainly is not, because in BC, private property on a waterfront property ends at the high water mark," says Plowman. "The bylaw should be fair to all. It shouldn't impose onerous constraints on a property owner who wants to build a dock, but a bylaw should also take into account the fact that 80% of people living on Bowen Island don't have waterfront lots, and if they want to see the ocean, they need to go to the beach."
Plowman calls the Land-Use Bylaw, as it has been amended, "permissive and lax" in regard to the ways that it regulates dock construction on Bowen.
"We don't even have any protection in place to say what a dock may or may not do with respect to where it is located on a beach. The councillors basically said, 'don't worry about the definition of a beach, we'll deal with that later on,' but we don't know when later on is. The issue of environmental impact is not being addressed at all in the bylaw either, because we are still relying on the person applying for permission to build the dock to hire someone to assess the environmental impact of it, which is like having the fox guard the hen-house. And with a maximum dock-length at 60 meters, that pretty much means it's open season for anyone who wants to build a dock anywhere on the island."
He says that it is likely, given the Provincial deadline for the finalization of this bylaw at the end of November, that the Municipal Council is likely to finalize the bylaw regardless of the public's opinion of it. Still, he says his organization plans to keep bringing up these issues.
"As part of the public process, we get the right to comment and have our views entered into the public record. Things get said at council, and that gets preserved on video, and that is permanent, its part of the public record. We can go back to those records at election time and decide whether the officials who made those statements are appropriate as public officials."
