Whistler 'eco-friendly' ? Asphalt plant. Need help please

[manic29]

OT
It's empty. You think it's sitting too low in the back? Or do you just mean my sloping driveway?
What should the vertical distance from wheel centre to top edge of fender be?

Offtopic, what is up with your white L400 ? Carrying a few sumo wrestler's in the back ?

[FalcoColumbarius]

OT: I think it's your sloping driveway.

[jessef]

Money talks.

After ignoring a zoning injunction, the plant took the municipality to court and won. They are able to continue to operate and are now publicly stating they will be expanding their operation from a 'temporary' site (they operated like this for over a decade) and seek zoning for an industrial permanent, larger operation.

http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistl ... id=2281960

Gotta love lawyers... can always find a loophole.

In the end it appears the decision in part came down to the definition of the word "manufacture."

After months of waiting, a B.C. Supreme Court ruling has found that Frank Silveri's aggregates business is allowed to manufacture asphalt onsite even if the aggregates used are brought in from elsewhere.

This whole fiasco took place during the whistler elections and all the new people voted in said they will have the plant moved. After this ruling, some have 'changed' their tune as they have already been voted in.

Politics stinks, especially when it sucks in normal people.

Some people argue that people shouldn't have moved there in the first place. Most people moved in there because the municipality put in a written contract to have it moved in 2010 before occupation. The municipality later overturned their own contract and soon after the government awarded this temporary operation a 10million dollar paving contract. How that works is beyond me.

After spending most weekends there last summer/fall, it's insane that it will continue to operate.

After a day of operation, you can wipe a cm of soot from the windows off any home and breathing it in isn't too nice. Everyday it runs, there is a hazy cloud over the whole residence area. You get a mild sore throat. Almost 1/2 the people living there are families with babies/children.

There is some really damaging pictures that were sent to fisheries/environment ministries with no response last year. Before/After images of when the ministry of environment sent out their team to investigate. Pretty bad stuff.

Settling chemical pool in the first picture flows out into a dredge going to the cheakamus river. This was filled in the morning of the environmental officer visit. Lots more like this before/after.

I don't think a single person would defend a company that dumps transaxle/engine fluids, settling tank asphalt oils into the ground water that flows into the cheakamus river and uses an 'unzoned' area 10 feet from the hiking trail to dump used asphalt. They also often run their trucks without licensing/plates up and down the highway. One pic shows the police giving a warning to the company owner but no ticket after the truck went head-on into oncoming traffic and caused a big scene. Driver didn't get anything.

This decision makes me sick. That plant is not the typical 'clean' and enviro-safe operation you see in the city.

[SquamptonRyan]

Whats with the picture "accident no ticket" That looks to be just a normal CVSE (DOT) check. I drive a garbage truck in whistler, they are not an uncommon site.

So. fact. The athletes village is built on the old whistler landfill. Located along the west side of the land is a massive ditch with many pipes leading into it which are constantly oozing red and green goo from all the old toxic waste that was dumped into that landfill over a couple decades. Out of curiosity were the people who bought these houses told beforehad what was right under the soil? Or were they all just looking over at the smoke billowing from the plant? (which is also nasty) Not an A+ location to invest in some property if you ask me!

I could see how the plant could sneak in there so many years ago, as it would have looked rather shiny and enviromental right next to the massive open landfill.

[SquamptonRyan]

with that said, a good chunk of the village stroll at the base of whis is built ontop of an even older landfill. It hurts my brain every day to see how much needless waste is produced from whistler.

[jessef]

The reason why there were so many cops is because the truck swerved into oncoming traffic on the highway right at function and cause cars to swerve off the road. Everyone pulled over including the driver hauling hot asphalt. Turns out both the truck and the piggy back load did not have license plates nor insurance. Because the truck was hauling 'time sensitive' cargo, the police let him go with a warning even after talking to the witnesses and to boot it drove off towards pemberton without plates. There was a story and lots of pics. There's a boatload of pictures that are self explanatory that show negligence and disregard for the environment the plant operates within. It's really bad. I've got pics of bears walking through the toxic pools and tracking the paws through the residential areas. It's just not a good thing except for the owner and those involved via money or politics.

[glenn]

If there are legitimate environmental concerns - they need to be documented and addressed harshly and immediately.

Seems like the Whistler city council led everyone up the path, and the beef is with them, and their broken promises. But, when you build a residential village beside a asphalt plant don't you expect noise, smell, and well . . . industrial ugliness. It reminds me of when the Coal Harbour crowd complained about the noise of the airplanes and helicopters.

I know that it's not that simple, and I hate dirty oil based industry too, but who's backyard should it be in?

[jessef]

No ones backyard. This company operates like a redneck operation that dumps chemicals without concern and as is seen, they do not care to change.

This was proven via pictures and video from before/during/after the ministry of environment's facility inspection site visit.

The plant shut down during the prep/Olympics/cleanup so no one could see the impact.

The impact this plant has on the environment is horrible. If it wasn't a burn,dump,haul operation and was equipped with manufacturing equipment like you see in modern plants, the uproar would be little. Take into consideration that there was a contract in place with the condition that the plant moves before residents move in, you have one heck of a situation no matter which way a person spins it.

All ministries have every piece of damaging evidence but have been passing the buck from one to another. This is after the ministry gave the 10+ million tender to this company with the knowledge and documentation that it was operating over a decade without a zoning permit.

None of it is good and this legal decision based on the 'wording' is a sham. Shows that his lawyers are really good at convincing the judge that producing asphalt is not the same as manufacturing asphalt. Gong show.

[glenn]

So why not attack the plant on purely environmental concerns? I'm sure you know this is coming off in the popular media as rich people trying to force the plant out of their back yard after buying right next to it. It's hard to drum up popular support for the poor "haves" - especially in this current 1% vs 99% era. Just look at the comments on the CBC website - overwhelmingly un-supportive of your cause:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... plant.html

[glenn]

here is an interesting comment - If it's the truth - then this is the story that needs to get out - the average person thinks Whistler = Playground for the rich.

From the CBC comments:

Just a point of clarification: Cheakamus Crossing is a Whistler Housing Development, meaning that the units are not bought and sold on the open market. There are maximum resale values attached to each unit, and you do NOT make a profit when you sell your place. It is the backbone of Whistler that live here; the hotel workers, the service workers, the carpenters ect., not millionaires who use their house for two weeks a year. Most of the people here have been saving for a place for many years and jumped at the opportunity to purchase an affordable place to live after paying rent to slum landlords and living with ten other people. The purchase agreement stated that the asphalt plant would be moved. The ex-mayor looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and told me the plant would move. The plant operated for many years with no business license, and in the opinion of many people, under shaky zoning. It is very unfortunate the way things have proceeded. Many people have felt lied to and misled by the previous council and hopefully we can move forward in a positive way.

[jessef]

3 pages I've put out enough info and data to show that there is more to this than just a handful of people screaming it smells near my home.

There are people who choose to ignore the raw data and others who see it for what it is.

99% of the Olympic village is whistler housing = housing specifically allocated for full-time employed/local citizens. This is not housing for people on welfare for $200 a month. This is housing set aside for residents who cannot afford the +millions to purchase a home in whistler. Whistler housing starts around 150,000k and goes up to the million mark. The benefit of this program allows residents to live in a home at less than half the 'retail market' with certain constraints, one of them being the property cannot be sold on the open market before it goes to the whistler housing auhtority (annual list of people waiting) and it cannot go above a certain percentage per annum. 1 or 2%. So when someone who is on the whistler housing list gets the opportunity to purchase something, they first qualify and then can go ahead with it providing they meet all the requirements. It is a really good program that highlights a middle/upper class housing system for permanent, longterm residents of a city or town.

There is a lot of money at stake here with this plant. Over the course of the past 10 years alone we are talking about tens of millions of dollars and the one entity to authorize it's location and existence is the whistler municipality that was previously governed by the plant owners co-partner. The correlation is there as is the money trail. That is the $ side.

The political side, the plant owner has some heavy contacts and friends in high places. The past mayor made use of this 'relationship'.

The environmental side is the plant doing it's own thing in full view of the public and ministries. Below are some images of areas that were allocated as wildlife preservation areas and within meters of the signs, trucks were filmed rolling in and dumping waste. Also there are pictures of uncured asphalt sitting in a forest area outside of the mining zone (that the plant is using). This section was blasted and grated without any warning. The blast occured midday and was so loud and strong it shifted 5 resident lots foundation not to mention 911 calls about a massive explosion. Now that area is used for dumping. From the trail you can toss a stone on one of the piles.

The red chemical you see spilling out of the dump trucks is so toxic, it burned the wooden sticks. This is the loading area for the asphalt and that chemical spill flows beside the settling pond which was covered before the ministry visit. After the visit, it was dredged back out and flows down into the creek - cheakamus river.

The day the ministry of environment inspector came out, that morning in full view of people standing at the base of the road, dump trucks unloaded the chemical waste they collected and dumped it all into the roadside ditch. This isn't heresay or a few kids saying what they think they saw. This is adults who work in all types of employment and are not tied together in any shape or form.

To answer your question, every piece of data, images, video, time lapses, soil samples have been sent to the environment/fisheries/mining ministries and the feedback is stonewalling.

This is not some tiny little 2-bit operation that a bunch of hippies want to boot out of the forest. It's far more complex and wrong is so many ways. Because of the large amount of financials involved, there are many people who are simply afraid of the wrong type of retaliation if the plant owner is pushed into a corner.

The last step was to go into a legal battle and have the municipality use the zoning law to remove the plant operation. That failed due to a technicality in the wording of 'manufacturing'. I didn't think it would work because the municipality is the one that allowed that plant to operate for so long and now want them to move under pressure from the council/members and residents, not to mention the incrimincating data that's out in the open.

There is only one winner and it's the people who's pockets are filling up with money.

Before, during and after the Ministry of Environment site inspection. The ministry had all of the information and soil samples prior to the inspection.

Pictures and lab testing do not lie.

Here's just a handful of hundreds:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26976821@N ... otostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26976821@N ... otostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26976821@N ... otostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26976821@N ... otostream/