Texada Community Hall was full to overflowing recently with residents opposed to a shellfish farm application for Northeast Bay.
It’s estimated that more than 150 people attended the meeting, sponsored by Texada Island Chamber of Commerce on Saturday, March 23, involving presentations from Northeast Shellfish Company owner Trevor Kosloski, as well as from concerned residents, regarding an application to site a shellfish farm in the bay, which islanders regard as parkland.
In an interview after the meeting, Kosloski said a lot of thought and research went into picking the area as the site for a shellfish farm. He said a lot of places on Texada Island are closed for shellfish picking and Northeast Bay is one of the few areas open when all the other areas are closed, due to the open and deep water.
Kosloski said the majority of the planned installation is not even in the bay; it’s in deeper water, which is a new practice.
“The water is cleaner and there is more current,” he said. “The shellfish do much better out in the deeper water.”
The operation is not going to be a typical shellfish farm, said Kosloski. His background is in conservation and law enforcement, so the environment is important to him. He said there are not going to be rafts, plastics or Styrofoam as part of the planned farm. He said the small part of the beach that is part of his application is at the very end and there are going to be no changes to the beach.
“There is going to be no obstruction to the UREP [use, recreation and enjoyment of the public] area,” said Kosloski. “A lot of people think it’s a park but it’s actually not a park. There will be no obstruction to access at the beach. Boats will still be able to access that area because the long lines are actually going to be sunk under the water, so you won’t even see the buoys. They’ll be five metres under the water.”
Kosloski said the farm will also be incorporating an ecotourism business into the business plan. If the application proceeds there will be tours of the site, hiking in the area and people will be able to dive at the site to see the different species attracted to the shellfish farm, according to Kosloski.
“It will be a completely different aspect of a typical shellfish farm,” he said. “It’s going to have very minimal impact, even visually, in the entire area. We are going to be able to create a whole variety of jobs with the shellfish aspect and with the tourism as well."
Kosloski is hoping to know by summer if the application has been approved.
Terry Hollo, one of the speakers at the event, said the opponents’ presentations were on “location, location, location.”
“It’s the wrong location,” said Hollo. “We have nothing against shellfish farms at all.”
Hollo said the original application was for the huge beach area and 22 hectares of water space. She said she is a member of the Texada Island official community plan committee, and mariculture is encouraged in the plan, as long as it is away from areas of high settlement and areas of recreation.
“We seek to preserve the recreational value of UREPs, regional parks and provincial parks,” she said. “We discourage any incompatible or adjoining industry.”
Hollo said the committee decided unanimously that this is not the location for a shellfish farm.
“We are not voting against economic development or shellfish farms, but not on a public beach,” she added.
Hollo said the original proposal from Kosloski has been substantially modified, proposing a new long-line system of submerged buoys for the shellfish.
“It’s never been used in North America; it’s in the testing stages in Norway and New Zealand,” she said. “We learned from the proponent that he has not shellfish farmed before, so it was a bit unnerving to find that someone new to the industry is going to put in a system not tested in North America, or BC waters.”
She said North Island-Powell River MP Rachel Blaney and Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons are both supportive of the opponents to the shellfish farm. Islanders have been in discussion with Simons to get the Northeast Bay UREP upgraded to a provincial park, she added.
“What other beaches in BC like this have a shellfish farm in front of these areas?” said Hollo. “This is dangerously close to being the first in the province that would have a shellfish farm and a public beach. We’re not saying no development at any cost, we’re saying no development at any cost in our park.”
qathet Regional District Electoral Area D director Sandy McCormick, who attended the meeting, said no one spoke in favour of what the proponent had to say.
She said the proponent appeared to try to sweeten the pot a little bit; that jobs would only go to Texada Island residents and the farm would occupy only part of the beach, but she didn’t believe anyone was convinced.
“It reminds me of the promises the gas company made to people of Texada Island some decades ago when they wanted to put a pipeline up the length of Texada,” said McCormick. “Texada Islanders were promised natural gas and that only Texada residents would work in the gas plant. Well guess what? Decades later, no people have been hired to work in a plant and we still do not have access to natural gas. Once burnt, twice shy. I’m very skeptical of the effort to try to sweeten the pot. It will take a lot of convincing to make me believe the things they pledged will actually come to be.”
McCormick said the regional district has voted to be in opposition to the shellfish farm initiative in Northeast Bay and has expressed that opinion to the provincial government.
“I don’t know if we will have a chance to review the revised proposal, which I understand they are putting forward, but I anticipate that we will and so we’ll have another discussion at that time,” she added.
The people on Texada are virtually 100 per cent opposed to locating a shellfish farm next to a park, according to McCormick.
“We have precious few parks and we have to protect them,” she said. “It’s a great project but it’s in the absolutely wrong place. Move it, everyone will go away, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
