February 22, 2021: This was the date on which the proposal for Riley’s Cidery first entered public view, in a Temporary Use Permit application presented to Bowen Municipal Council.
Let’s help this thing happen, and not throw spanners in the works, so yeah, whatever’s needed, let’s make it happen
Councillor David Hocking, February 22, 2021
This should have been the first step in a serious process of consideration, investigation and deliberation. Those things didn’t happen; instead, this was a process marked by full-throated advocacy, misdirection, and omitted information, rushed to a conclusion a month later.
On February 22, 2021, a proposal for a Temporary Use Permit (TUP) went before Bowen Island Municipal Council. This proposal was for a property at 620 Laura Road on Bowen Island to be allowed to operate as a cidery for a three year period. The appearance of this item on the agenda was the first public notice given of this proposal.
To prepare the TUP, the proponents, Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie, initially contacted municipal Manager of Planning & Development, Daniel Martin, to submit and prepare this application. Daniel Martin has written to me that this process began in late January 2021, and that he made a site visit on January 24, 2021. It later became clear that in August of 2020 the proponents had obtained a building permit and then occupancy permission for the conversion of an on-site outbuilding into what was named a cidery, with at least some water related construction work (a holding tank); so at a staff level, involving planning and development, the municipality had knowledge of the proposed cidery from at least August 2020.
In consultation with the proponents, Daniel put together a proposal that he then presented to Council on February 22, 2021. This report advances the application by marrying the proponents’ request to a supposedly thorough, professional and considered review by staff (ie Daniel Martin). That review includes, among other things, examining:
- all applicable regulations
- consistency with the provisions of the Official Community Plan
- potential impacts, including environmental and fiscal risks for the municipality
For a Temporary Use Permit particularly, which is a device that:
- allows a land use specifically not permitted in existing zoning
- sets aside provisions of the Land Use Bylaw
- does not require a public hearing
one would expect a very high and searching standard of staff review.
note on sources
Clips and other material from municipal video, other municipal sources, and some cited sources are being used under the Fair Dealing exception to copyright law.
Images without copyright or source attribution are either my own, or obtained for free use without attribution.
You can watch Daniel Martin’s TUP presentation at left. For reference, there is also:
As we will see, there are multiple issues raised in this TUP process that deserve consideration. For now, with reference to the pollution evidenced in my previous post, I am going to follow one single thread through, that being how this TUP set-up and allowed a situation where the safety of drinking water and the protection of whole ecosystems could be compromised.
So, we start with a creek.
Murray Creek makes its first (non)entrance….
Although the TUP application requires a site plan which specifically marks and identifies the following:
“[the] location of natural and topographic features including watercourses, wetlands, the sea, and any cliffs“
the site plan submitted and then presented by Daniel Martin does not include the watercourse Murray Creek which bisects the property at 620 Laura Road. At the time of his site visit, in late January 2021, the creek was in full flow, and would have been obvious both visibly and audibly.
Below is the site map presented by Daniel Martin on February 22, 2021. This is the most detailed site map ever presented by him for consideration.
It is entirely remarkable that Murray Creek does not feature at all in presentation, consideration, and deliberation at any stage of the discussion and promotion of Riley’s Cidery – then (February 2021) and now.
The creek is just not there in all the varied self-presentations by the proponents (Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie), and in the formal processes and discussions of Municipal staff and Council.
For example, on the Riley’s Cidery webpage, they describe the two orchards they use for production, with a lyrical description of the creek running through the Similkameen Valley orchard, supporting an organic bio-culture, resting on a rich, healthy, biodiverse habitat, but there is silence on the creek which bisects the Bowen Island site.
a tale of two orchards:
620 Laura Road, Bowen Island
The orchard was planted over a 30 year period by John and Josephine Riley and contains almost 1000 different apple varieties making it one of the largest apple collections in North America.
Most of the apple trees have been trained using the oblique CORDON method. The single stems are planted 24” apart and trained at a 45 degree angle. This allows for more trees in much less space than conventional plantings.
In 2019 Rob & Christine took over from the Riley’s and selected traditional cider varieties that had done well in the original apple collection and grafted out a new cider orchard on the property.
They also grow figs, cherries, pears, almonds, medlar, hazelnuts, quince, and apricot as well as raspberries, blueberries, and grapes.
Four Winds Farm, Similkameen Valley
The Four Winds Farm, situated on nine acres, was established in 1988 in the Similkameen Valley of the Southern Interior of BC. The trees were only 3 yrs old when owner Doe Gregoire started to transition them to organic methods of growing. Organics were just getting started and there was lots to learn about how to grow in this new way! Learning from other farmers, agricultural forums, workshops and collaboration with the Summerland research station all helped in developing the methods for organic growing.
The orchard consists of five acres of Macintosh and one acre of Spartans with about 25 peach trees. The Macintosh trees are grown on an Antonovka root stock that result in hardy, long lived standard trees. Most orchards have changed over to the popular super spindle root stock however the 40 yr old Macs are in their prime and continue to give exceptional fruit each year.
A creek runs through the property with Cottonwoods, Birch, Poplar, Saskatoon, Dogwood, Wild Roses, Prickly pear cactus. These species provides a natural habitat for birds, wild life, many varieties of bees and predator insects which are needed to keep the balance in organics.
source: https://www.rileyscider.com/pages/orchards, consulted February 14, 2024
Why Murray Creek matters
On February 22, 2021, on the fourth slide of his presentation, Daniel Martin used an image from Bowmap to illustrate the lot boundaries for 620 Laura Road :
what’s this?
a pinned note marks an important idea, concept, or fact which will be explored further
BowMap is a utility provided by the Municipality:
BowMap is an online, interactive map showing property lines, land use zones, parks, trails, beaches and more on Bowen Island. https://bowenislandmunicipality.ca/bowmap/
One feature of BowMap is the mapping of the Development Permit Areas (DPAs) for the whole of the island. These areas indicate where particular features mean that construction, building, or land disturbance require special permitting or are highly restricted – ie they prioritise the informed management of known hazards and risks for the larger public good.
By far the largest DPA category, and the most articulated, is that related to water, for “Watershed, Aquifer & Streamside Protections” – protections for both the safety of human drinking water, and the preservation of wildlife and ecosystems:
Below is the BowMap diagramming of 620 Laura Road: slide right to see the basic lot properties, and slide left to see the DPA restrictions overlaid on the lot:
The blue dotted lines mark streams: you can clearly see Murray Creek running from the top left of the mapped area right through 620 Laura Road and down through the property below. I’ve added a label to the image below to indicate Murray Creek for reference.
Murray Creek clearly intersects with and feeds into other streams and water systems. This is evident on the map, and also from the dotted line. That indicates that this stream feeds into (is a tributary to) a fish-bearing stream.
The yellow shading indicates watershed protection; the watershed here is the Grafton Lake watershed, the complex of water sources and streams that supply the lake that supplies 49% of Bowen Island homes with water. The blue shading indicates stream protections, roughly marking the standard 30m setback from watercourses for protection. You can also see that the closeness of streams here doubles that effect in some places, again, running right through the lot at 620 Laura Road.
next time:
I’ve focussed in this post on two things:
- marking the public arrival of Riley’s Cidery as a municipally endorsed project
- establishing the importance of Murray Creek, and its curious absence from deliberations
In my next post, I will extend that consideration to focus on the truly inane and absurd presentation of the water impact of cider production, as given by Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie, and accepted by the municipality. The post after that will look at how that performative fantasy denies fact, and actually leads to terrible consequences.
Along the way, I’m touching on other issues (as with the vineyard note above) that we will return to in more detail in later posts; this is a complicated story, involving intersecting and tangled threads, of process (TUPs for example), of principle (truth telling, governance directed by the OCP) and more.
I would like to see us do everything we can to help this young business get on its feet
Councillor Michael Kaile, February 22, 2021
