the life of a mountain town....write a letter if you care about some nature left intact

Otherwise, listen up. Right now this is what’s on my mind, BROHM RIDGE, see this picture and remember it.



In the future, you might be calling it GAS (aka Garibaldi at Squamish). I’m not against development, please understand that, I’m against dumb and inconsiderate development. I may be wrong but I feel this is likely one of those cases. A case for all small mountain towns. Imagine destroying hundreds of acres of wildlife, only to erect 25 ski lifts, 2 golf courses, 6,000 part-time (mostly out of country I assume) residential units, 100 km of new roads and lets not forget the hotels, the hot tubs, and suspicious message parlors, AND imaging doing all of this while knowing very clearly that WHISTLER/BLACKCOLM lives just 20 minutes down the road, that you would be HEAVILY impacting the local environment and basically making yourself no friends in the process. Here’s the e-mail that is buzzing around our beloved community, please read it…..

The development encompasses land that’s been identified as prime habitat
for endangered or at-risk species such as peregrine falcon, wolverine,
and marbled murrelet. The GAS area also includes a threatened grizzly
bear population unit that has been designated for recovery by the
province. The project has come under especially intense fire because
of its potential impacts on Brohm River, one of the most productive
salmon and steelhead streams in the province. The development calls
for expansive water management, including sewage and storm water
discharge, irrigation for golf courses and potable water, extractions
of water for snowmaking, and as many as five dams.

WHAT: Attend the Tuesday, July 7 Squamish council meeting.
WHEN: Tuesday, July 7.
WHERE: Council Chambers, Municipal Hall, 37955 Second Avenue.

*If you can’t attend the July 7 council meeting, please urge
provincial and local officials to reject the GAS ski resort proposal.

Environmental Assessment Office: eaoinfo@gov.bc.ca
Premier Gordon Campbell: premier@gov.bc.ca
West Vancouver - Garibaldi MLA - joan.mcintyre.mla@leg.bc.ca

District of Squamish
Mayor Greg Gardner: ggardner@squamish.ca
Councillor Bryan Raiser: braiser@squamish.ca
Councillor Corinne Lonsdale: clonsdale@squamish.ca
Councillor Doug Race: drace@squamish.ca
Councillor Patricia Heintzman: pheintzman@squamish.ca
Councillor Paul Lalli: plalli@squamish.ca
Councillor Rob Kirkham: rkirkham@squamish.ca

I’m truly torn here, on the one hand, we’re all fucked anyway right, why don’t we just enjoy the ride into the depths of hell and jump on the devils wagon, er I mean, the chair lift and go skiing and use the new roads to access new terrain and great cliffs, it could be fun, and in the end, we may not be able to do anything about it anyway. I mean shit, honestly, this would be pretty darn good for the value of my house, and jobs for the local economy, but at what COST? It’s worth putting up the fight. On the other hand it’s not very sustainable, it’s not very palatable, and it’s not good for our community, it’s a wasteful and damaging project and I would much rather see our council and our attention be brought back to the downtown core, the only true resource that separates us from Whistler and Vancouver, make it clean, pretty and beautiful, focus on THAT and good people will come, I promise, it’s easy peesy. Now go, or write a letter, whatever you can do to stop the dumb and inconsiderate people from the city stepping over us in their attempt to do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, and I don’t have to tell you what those reasons are. Do I????

I think it’s appropriate for me to post a picture I took today at the Canadian Alpine Clubhouse, it creates a wonderful feeling I have about the development in our FRAGILE mountain areas. The sign before this reads “SLOW”, but knowing the poor habits of our HUMAN ways, the second one reminds you ever so kindly, I hope you enjoy my attempt at photography…….



That’s all for today, I’m out.