Section 24 authorizes the Minister to order the assessment be conducted by “a hearing panel, with a public hearing to be held by one or more individuals that the minister may appoint to the hearing panel…”; and empowers the Minister to delegate to the panel the power to set scope, procedures and methods of the assessment, and to exercise the powers of a commission of public inquiry. [...] 30 Residents transmitted approximately 188 submissions of “unsolicited written comments” to the Regional District Board that was considering the WCOL application for change of the status of the NGL Project’s ALR land to a designation allowing a non- Application for a Comprehensive Environmental Assessment Page 9 of 36 of the Natural Gas Liquid Recovery Project of West Coast Olefins Ltd. [...] First, the proposed site is ‘landlocked’ in the centre of the ALR regions (see map on Appendix A).53 This means that an access road must be built and any additional traffic generated by the NGL Project, will traverse right through to the middle of largely undisturbed ALR.54 Second, there are concerns about the permanent loss of the only farmland in the area and the proximity of the project to othe. [...] As noted in our submission to the RDFFG, there is little information outlining the reclamation of the land after the proposed industrial use.55 Finally, the irreversible impacts to agricultural livelihoods and the agricultural character of the area may lead to long-term loss of the viability of agricultural income. [...] Over the course of my review, West Coast Olefins has clarified that the project has an anticipated peak construction employment of 80-120 full time jobs and that the news and project website employment projections of “thousands of construction jobs” are for the entire supply chain of the project, not direct employment at the project facilities.
Authors
- Pages
- 41
- Published in
- Canada
