BC’s environmental assessment office has ruled that the construction last fall of a concrete pad for a day lodge on the Jumbo Glacier Resort site must stop because its location in an avalanche zone does not comply with the terms of the project’s environmental certificate.
In an April 24 letter to the developer, Glacier Resorts Ltd., the environmental assessment office's compliance officer Autumn Cousins stated that, “It is the [our] view that it is not possible for [the developer] to achieve compliance … with the two structures as currently located.”
The environmental certificate—the government document that says the project can go ahead, with environmental conditions—expired in October and can only be renewed if the Minister of the Environment decides the project was “substantially started” at that time. The day-lodge pad was an eleventh-hour attempt by the developer to show that construction had begun. Environment minister Mary Polak inspected the site in October but has not yet made a decision on whether it was substantially started.
If Polak decides the project was not substantially started, the project will have to go back to square one and apply for another environmental certificate. If, on the other hand, the minister decides in the developer’s favour, construction may continue. But to keep the day lodge in its current location the developer would have to apply for an amendment to the environmental certificate.