caca

The City of Vancouver planners are going forward with Imagine West End Waterfront. This plan involves serious geo-engineering including raising Sunset and English Bay beaches about a metre, burying the seawall in non-beach areas, and creating marsh land along with a couple of small islands.

The impetus behind the project is decolonization of the foreshore, as well as flood-proofing against anticipated sea level rise (SLR). On page 4 of the City’s Information Booklet a map of the waterfront shows the flooding envisioned with 1.2 metres (120 cm) of SLR at high tide, during a 1-in-200 year storm event. The existing beaches, seawall, and lower grass areas would be partially inundated, however there is no risk of infrastructure damage outside of the park boundaries given that Beach Ave. is several metres above the seawall.

The City’s exaggerated 120 cm scenario for future SLR stems from the Provincial Government’s outdated Change in Sea Level in B.C. (1910 - 2014) which actually forecast 26 to 98 cm SLR by 2100. That prediction was based on global modelling and not on local, real, observations that show relative sea level rise at the Vancouver Harbour station of only 3.7 cm ↑ per 100 years.

Not only is past SLR at Vancouver pretty insignificant, it can be explained by the rate of land subsidence occurring along the shore where the station is located. A study by Mazotti et al mapped the Lower Mainland, setting out areas of both uplift and subsidence. The downtown core abutting the harbour where the tidal measurements are taken, was found to be subsiding at a rate of about 0.1 cm/yr. which is 10 cm ↓ per 100 years. From this, any apparent SLR at that station is more than explained by the underlying land sinking under the accruing weight of downtown development.

The BC Government hasn’t updated their important web page with available data from 2014 onward, perhaps because it would present an inconvenient-to-the-narrative decline in sea level at Vancouver:

There is no SLR problem in Vancouver requiring a complete make-over of the English Bay waterfront, unless you over-ride real data with global hysteria. Even if sea levels rise significantly, contrary to the historical trend, the Imagine West End Waterfront transformation won’t alleviate flooding. It will only appear to do so because the existing seawall is to be buried, so there would be no visible evidence of wave overtopping at the height of that hidden barrier.

The seawall wasn’t designed to be flood protection, but rather, it is erosion protection. Despite the proposed disruptive and expensive changes, those new culturally-appropriate marshes, gathering places and viewing platforms would still be endangered. Any sited seaward of the covered seawall would be at particular risk of destruction given that their underfill support would be subject to storm erosion unprotected by any wave-break. The juicy irony in this is that our buried colonial past (seawall) will likely reemerge when the new native soil in front of it disappears either gradually over time or during that 1-in-200 year, king-tide storm event.

The top of the well-used, well-loved, seawall is now 2 to 3 metres higher than the low tide zone in front of it. In order to lay to rest that obstacle to Reconciliation, but still achieve the gentle slope required for marsh propagation, fill material would have to be placed at least 20 to 30 metres seaward in order to have a reasonably flat (10%) tidal run-up. Take a Google Map virtual walk on the seawall and imagine how much of the existing intertidal, and the life it supports, would be smothered in this process … to save you time, the answer is – all of it.

Beyond the unnecessary and ecologically damaging end result, the project will take 30 years to fully implement. Three decades of major interruption and displacement along what is arguably the City’s crown jewel.

And how is this eco-cultural farce going to paid for? Through monies obtained from developers seeking upzoning, called Community Amenity Contributions (CAC). Those funds are supposed to be used to provide improvements for neighbourhoods that must absorb densification. Additional affordable housing, childcare and community facilities are the primary target for CAC, but adding new parkland also qualifies. However, renovating existing parkland assets isn’t acceptable, as set out in the Community Amenity Contributions Policy:

3.1 Any contributions toward the following will not be considered as CACs:

(a) Capital renewal and/or capital renovation that does not offer an incremental benefit beyond what is currently provided to the public

Even if significant SLR should take place, the West End is not at risk for flooding and the existing world-class waterfront park and pathway more than accommodates resident’s recreation/relaxation needs. The Imagine West End Waterfront plan will actually diminish the amount of land available for that purpose. The only thing dubiously achieved in this fever dream is decolonization … is virtue signalling an incremental benefit?

This fiasco has the potential to deny hundreds of $ millions in social benefit while disabling the finest stretch of waterfront in the city for 30 years, and perhaps ruining it in the process. The money involved, that should be used for housing and community facilities, will be cynically taken in contravention of City policy, by means of Community Amenity Contributions appropriation (CACA).

The CACA on the shoes of the City, after trampling on social housing and community programs to improperly fund eco-indigenous wokeness, will be hard to scrape off once the public sees how their beloved English Bay waterfront is spoiled.