The South Fraser Perimeter Road will cut into farmland and homes
in some areas but, overall, communities along the route will
benefit, government documents say
William Boei
Vancouver Sun
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The provincial government will need to acquire all or part of more
than 700 properties, including about 200 residential properties, for
the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Highway.
Government documents show 105 hectares of prime farm land, all of it
in Delta, will be taken out of production. That includes 90 hectares
needed for the highway right-of-way, and 15 hectares whose access
will be cut off by the highway.
The new road will run through 18 hectares of cranberry farms,
representing about 10 per cent of B.C.'s $30-million cranberry crop.
The planned route skirts around the protected lands of Burns Bog,
but will take out 15 hectares of forest near the protected area,
mainly along its northern edge.
Those are among the hundreds of details revealed in a stack of
documents that comprise the Gateway Program's application to the
province's Environmental Assessment Office for environmental
certification.
Among the others:
- Planners have rejected a request from Sunbury -- one of Delta's
oldest residential areas -- to build a 3.5-kilometre tunnel under
the community instead of running the highway through part of the
neighbourhood. A tunnel is technically feasible, the documents say,
but would be "cost-prohibitive" at three times the price of a
surface highway through the same area.
- There are several major archeological sites along the route, where
native villages once stood and where human remains are likely to be
unearthed.
- Residents near 36 sites along the route may experience noise
problems. Most of them can be mitigated, but seven sites are
expected to have more "highly annoyed residents" than the maximum
acceptable figure of 6.5 per cent.
- The plan calls for a 400-metre-long bridge to be built across the
Fraser Heights wetland to minimize disturbances to the area's
sensitive ecology.
The $800-million South Fraser Perimeter Road is the second piece of
the province's $3-billion Gateway Program to reach the environmental
assessment stage.
It follows a project for a new Pitt River Bridge and a Mary Hill
interchange, key parts of a $400-million North Fraser Perimeter Road
that will connect and improve existing truck routes north of the
Fraser River.
The South Fraser road will run for 40 kilometres, starting at
Highway 17 in Delta near the Deltaport container port, running north
through farm land past Ladner, then west along the northern edge of
Burns Bog and along the south shore of the river to Port Kells in
Surrey, where it will join up with the approach to TransLink's new
Golden Ears Bridge.
It will have four lanes and a speed limit of 80 km/h, with five
interchanges and five intersections.
It will be the major east-west link south of the Fraser for goods
movement, bypassing the severely congested Port Mann Bridge.
It will link directly or via other access roads to Deltaport,
Vancouver International Airport, Fraser Port Terminals, Fraser
Surrey Docks, the CN Intermodal Terminal, the Tsawwassen ferry
terminal, industrial areas at Tilbury, Annacis Island, Bridgeview
and Port Kells, and two U.S. border routes.
The highway is a key piece in the provincial government's plans to
turn the Lower Mainland into a gateway for trade between North
America and Asia, especially for containers.
It will take a lot of truck and vehicle traffic off the streets of
Delta and part of Surrey, some of them now heavily congested.
"There will be a loss of agricultural land and some industrial
land," says an overview of the environmental studies.
"However, the broader residential and employment population base in
both communities will benefit from reduced congestion, better
over-all access and enhanced development opportunities."
A socio-economic study predicts the road will spur development of an
additional 74 hectares of land along the highway by 2021, with 7,705
new jobs, increased land values and higher property tax revenue for
local governments.
There is broad support for the highway, even from some of the
opponents of the more controversial parts of the Gateway Program --
the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the widening of the
Trans-Canada Highway. But some of the details have already provoked
opposition and will probably generate more as residents and interest
groups learn more about the details.
The highway has been part of regional and provincial road-building
plans for decades, said Gateway Program director Mike Proudfoot.
"The studies, the level of review and analysis we've done is
significant," he said, promising that the project will clean up
after itself.
"We are governed by very rigorous federal and provincial
environmental processes," Proudfoot said.
"The results of our studies are now being put forward, with
mitigation measures to avoid or minimize the impact of the project,
and we welcome public participation and feedback on the work that's
been done."
The province's Environmental Assessment Office is holding a series
of open houses on the project, and is open for public comment on the
project until the end of November.
Most interest groups haven't filed their submissions yet, but
Sunbury resident Laura White has protested a lack of information on
the rejection of the tunnel proposal.
"We are at a loss to understand why this alternative is not being
explored fully," White told the EAO. "The environmental impacts of a
tunnel, using the burrowing machines built in Richmond, eliminate
the risk of Fraser River, Ravine and Burns Bog impact. It allows for
the continued enjoyment of North Delta's only waterfront property
and leaves existing parkland untouched.
"Once the land is taken away, we can't go back," White said.
The documents say the tunnel was dismissed because "community
benefits did not outweigh the safety risks, high construction costs,
and high operations and maintenance costs. The North Delta tunnel
concept is not feasible, and it was not considered further."
The bridge over the wetland would reduce the highway's "footprint"
in that section to .135 hectare from seven hectares if it was built
at road level, the documents say.
There are four known archeological sites along the route and Gateway
researchers say they may have found four more.
The major ones are near the Glenrose and St. Mungo fish canneries on
the eastern part of the route.
Both canneries were built on the sites of ancient native villages
going back 4,500 to 8,000 years, and will require excavation that
exposes archeological deposits. Most of the Glenrose site will be
left undisturbed but at St. Mungo, there is "high potential to
unearth both intact and disturbed cultural deposits, including human
remains," the documents say.
Proudfoot said planners are working closely with local first nations
to avoid conflicts and archeological specialists will also be used.
The documents also note that the Archeological and Registry Service
Branch in the ministry of culture and tourism has suggest that
"capping" -- paving over the sites and leaving the artifacts in the
ground -- "may be a viable approach to advancing the project, while
protecting archeological resources."
The highway right-of-way will occupy a total of 245 hectares
including 14 hectares of disturbed lands, 134 hectares of developed
rural and urban land, and 97 hectares of land with vegetation and
wildlife values.
In addition to the 105 hectares of farm land that will be taken out
of production, another 20 hectares may be downgraded to lower-value
uses because of access problems.
Proudfoot said project staff are working with local cranberry
farmers to try to improve drainage and lessen the impact on the
cranberry crop.
Several animal species considered at risk will be affected by
construction and habitat changes, including sandhill cranes, Pacific
water shrews and southern red-backed voles.
Barn owls will lose roosting habitat and may collide with moving
vehicles, the documents say. Sandhill cranes using fields adjacent
to Burns Bog and Crescent Slough may find the changes disturbing.
The shrews and voles will see reductions in habitat.
The project will acquire all or parts of about 730 properties, most
of them industrial and commercial, but including about 200
residential properties, most of them in Sunbury and the Bridgeview
area.
It sounds like Sunbury will be hard hit, but Proudfoot said the
highway will take so much traffic off River Road that residents will
probably be relieved.
"The highway will run on the river side of the community, between
the rail line and the residential area," Proudfoot said.
"The Sunbury neighbourhood for years has had the problem of heavy
traffic on River Road. The South Fraser Perimeter Road will address
that problem, and I think that will be very well received by the
community."
Where traffic noise on the new highway is a problem, Gateway staff
recommend mitigation measures such as quiet pavement, coordinated
traffic signals and noise barrier walls on as many as 25 of the 36
sites forecast to have noise problems.
The highway will not only take traffic off local roads, at 43
locations it will sever them. That will require four new access
roads to connect cut-off neighbourhoods and 29 other modifications
to local road networks.
There may be "community cohesion issues" in some areas, the
documents say, but most of the route goes through industrial areas.
They conclude that "the majority of project-related effects can be
fully mitigated."
The project will be modified during subsequent design stages to
minimize impact, but in some cases compensation may be required. For
example, when fish habitat is destroyed, new habitat may be created
in other places.
The project has identified 454 potentially contaminated sites along
the route, everything from old industrial operations to railway
sorting yards, auto part lots and underground residential
fuel-storage tanks. Contaminants may include hydrocarbons, heavy
metals, PCBs, herbicides and pesticides and fecal coliforms.
But the documents say all the problems can be addressed, and
Proudfoot added that soils along the route will be cleaner after the
highway is built than they are now.
Air quality in the region is predicted to improve in the coming
years, with or without the South Fraser Perimeter Road. When it is
finished, the highway will contribute about one per cent of total
emissions in the region, the documents say, but by 2021, air quality
guidelines will be exceeded less often than they are now.
All the details can be found on the EAO's website, at http://www.eao.gov.bc.ca/.
bboei@png.canwest.com
- This story can be heard online after 10:30 a.m. today at
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- - -
OPEN HOUSES
The B.C. transportation ministry's Gateway Program has held
one open house for its South Fraser Perimeter Road proposal and is
planning three more:
- Nov. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Holly elementary school, 4625
62nd St., Delta.
- Nov. 9 from 5 to 9 p.m. at Bridgeview Hall, 11475 126A St.,
Surrey.
- Nov. 16 at the Pacific Academy, 10238 168th St., Surrey.
SOUTH FRASER PERIMETER ROAD
Proposed route for the South Fraser Perimeter Road, which is slated
for construction in 2007. Of the 105 hectares of farmland that will
be taken out of production by the South Fraser Perimeter Highway:
- 39 hectares are used to grow vegetable crops.
- 18 hectares grow cranberries.
- 15 hectares are forest land near Burns Bog.
- 15 hectares won't be built on but farmers' access will be severed.
- 13 hectares are used for livestock foraging.
- Four hectares grow blueberries.
- One hectare consists of various small holdings.
Source: Gateway Program documents
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
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