Sunshine Coast residents upset by plans for a second sand and gravel operation

Four years ago, Hawaiian golf course developers bought a 16,800-tonne shipload of Sechelt sand to help build greens, tee boxes and bunkers on their prestigious Big Island property near Waikoloa.

It sounds like selling ice to Inuit or chocolate to the Swiss, but the B.C. sand met the exacting U.S. Golf Association standards demanded by the course owners, with every grain being one millimetre or less so the sand would dry quickly after a rain.

Sand, gravel and crushed rock from the Sechelt Peninsula have become hot commodities in recent years and while golf courses might love the stuff, most of it now finds its way into construction projects driving the economies of B.C. and California.

Sechelt is already home to one of Canada's largest sand and gravel operations, run by Construction Aggregates Ltd., and a proposal by Vancouver-based Pan Pacific Aggregates to open at least one more similar-sized facility has many locals screaming that enough is enough.

"We don't think the Sechelt Peninsula is a place for a mine," bed and breakfast operator Jan Williams said in an interview. "We already have one and we don't want another one."

Aggregate -- the collective name for sand, gravel and crushed stone -- is a key component in the development of roads, sidewalks, housing, factories, offices, schools and any number of commercial construction projects. B.C. aggregate producers estimate a new single family home in the Fraser Valley uses about 166 tonnes of aggregate while a new school or hospital needs 14,000 tonnes.

Construction Aggregates produces about six million tonnes a year from its Sechelt facility and about 20 per cent of that is shipped on huge 225-metre Panamax freighters to San Francisco for the massive Bay Bridge seismic upgrading project. Most of the other 80 per cent is sent by barge to the Lower Mainland.

CAL, which has operated in Sechelt since 1989, upgraded its deep-sea loading facilities in 2001 when it spent $10 million to build a 1.5-kilometre conveyor that carries aggregate from the mine into water deep enough to accommodate the massive freighters that transport the material to California.

The company has permits in place to mine the site until 2038 and general manager Chuck Cookney said most aggregate producers in the area, including Lafarge and Jack Cewe Ltd., are operating near full capacity right now.

"The market for aggregate is very strong and everybody is very busy these days," he said.

After 17 years in the area, residents have more or less accepted the CAL aggregate mine and learned to deal with any accompanying dust, noise or traffic concerns that arise from time to time. But the proposal by Pan Pacific Aggregates to develop a new aggregate mine in old-growth forest in the Caren Range near Sechelt has drawn tremendous opposition from area residents.

Opponents have sent a 2,600-name petition -- including the signature of renowned singer-songwriter and Sechelt resident Joni Mitchell -- to the federal government asking for a "full comprehensive study" of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the Sechelt Carbonate Project before any permits are granted.

Pan Pacific, an international company that's listed on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market, plans to submit a large producer permit application to the province by January 2007 for the right to develop a mine 15 kilometres from Sechelt that will produce six million tonnes of aggregate a year. The ambitious $120-million project includes a 9.5-kilometre conveyor that would carry aggregate from the mine to a deep-sea loading facility in the Wood Bay area on the west side of the Sechelt peninsula.

Company plans over the longer term also call for the possible expansion of an existing small-scale aggregate operation on the peninsula into another six-million-tonnes-a-year facility.

Williams, who represents a group of concerned citizens called Friends of the Sechelt Peninsula, fears the company eventually wants to connect the two proposed mines and create "one very large gravel pit" in an environmentally sensitive area with lakes, marshes and old-growth forest with trees from 1,500 to 2,000 years old.

"If they start drilling holes and connecting water bodies, there's a possibility of arsenic contamination, loss of surface water and loss of ground water," she said.

Pan Pacific's application to the province will require an environmental impact assessment, but opponents have petitioned for a federal study to ensure the most rigorous assessment possible. Williams said a provincial representative told them at a public meeting in February the province has not recently turned down any mining permit application.

"So we feel [provincial regulators] aren't rigorous enough -- they're open for business," she said.

Pan Pacific president Alan Whitehead said that if people are concerned about environment impacts, they should let the environmental assessment process take its course because it's "rigorous and onerous."

"If there are any significant impacts, they will come out of that process and will have to be dealt with," he said in an interview.

Whitehead said natural resource extraction -- logging and mining -- have long been cornerstones of the Sechelt Peninsula economy and it has already been proven that mining and tourism can co-exist, as long as the mining is done in a environmentally sustainable manner.

"The economy of the Sunshine Coast still very much depends on a healthy natural resources sector," he said. "Look at the past 15 years since Construction Aggregates went into operation. Tourism has continued to grow, people continue to move to the area to retire and take advantage of recreational activities and we don't see that changing. There's nothing we're going to do that should impact that negatively."

He said the proposed new mine would create about 100 new jobs.

Williams agreed natural-resource extraction drove the Sechelt economy many years ago but said that's no longer the case, noting that logging and mining combined account for about six per cent of the area's total employment, compared with 24 per cent employed in the retail, accommodation and food and beverage sectors.

Bill Bennett, the provincial minister of state for mining, said conflicts around aggregate mining take up about a third of his time, even though total aggregate mining royalties to the province are just $6 million a year -- a drop in the bucket compared with the $2-billion-plus generated annually by oil and gas.

"Visually, aggregate mining is not a pleasant thing to look at," he said in an interview. "People live in rural areas of B.C. to enjoy the vistas and the peace and quiet. With aggregate mining, you have machinery operating in gravel pits, blasting going on in quarries and big trucks rolling down local highways hauling this stuff to where it needs to go.

"By its very nature, it's a controversial activity that offends a lot of people."

Bennett said real estate development, tourism and the service sector are major segments of the Sechelt area economy now so when Pan Pacific submits its application, the province will have to consider the new mine's impact on the economy.

"We'll have to consider what would happen to real estate values anywhere this project comes into contact with the general public," he said. " . . . Can they do this without having an undue impact on the local economy? That's a difficult question."

But Bennett stressed the government has an obligation to keep aggregate resources accessible because without sand and gravel, the B.C. economy would "screech to a stop."

"If you start saying you can't mine aggregate here or there and we're only going to mine it some place 100 or 200 miles from Vancouver, then all of a sudden the price of building highways and schools and hospitals goes up because it becomes a scarce commodity," he said. "That means you have to raise people's taxes so there are some pretty serious consequences to not managing this file properly."

Sechelt Mayor Cameron Reid said Construction Aggregates Ltd. has been a "good corporate citizen" in Sechelt and recently donated more than $50,000 worth of work and materials for a new arena project near the town hall. He said the company has always responded to noise and dust issues promptly and feels the aggregate operation has become an accepted part of the community.

Reid feels confident the provincial assessment process will take a hard look at any concerns associated with Pan Pacific's proposed new mining operations and if the company can't satisfy any issues, it's plans will be rejected.

"I know many people are totally opposed to it, but we have to balance our needs for economic opportunities to our community," he said. "In my opinion, there's a need for economic generators here. There are a huge number of people retiring here, but there's not a huge opportunity for people to get jobs here. If we want opportunities for our children and grandchildren, then we need some economic engines to provide those."