Dear Editor,
We are a small community with limited resources and a limited tax base. Many of the properties and homes in the valley are threatened by flooding, and many of them have no protection of any sort.
At the informational meeting on April 30th, valley residents were told that two portions of the existing airport dike were damaged in the 2010 flood. Subsequently the two sections were repaired but these repairs were only “patches” and not up to standards. What would it cost to bring only those two sections up to standards?
The airport is already better protected than a large number of properties in the valley. It seems unfair to ask home owners who are at risk of losing their homes to take on thirty years of debt to pay for airport protection.
Without discussing the provincial government’s unilateral off loading of its responsibilities by “orphaning” the airport dike and other like structures in the valley, and without discussing the issue of the CCRD’s taking on legal liability by establishing a diking authority, it seems an egregious misallocation of limited resources to spend over three million dollars to upgrade the airport dike.
Robert GruetterBox 482Bella Coola