Rotten on Bowen: cidergate series POST 8

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9

In my last post, I made reference to:

• high BOD wastewater
• Bowen Island Municipality’s “own knowledge of the risks of high BOD wastewater from alcohol production“

That post also makes clear that cider production produces very large quantities of water carrying a lot of bioactive matter. Another way to say this is to describe it as (in part) high BOD wastewater. BOD stands for “Biochemical Oxygen Demand”. The higher the BOD level, the more organic matter is present in the water. Organic matter will rot (putrescible is the fancy word for this). I’ll get into the specifics of this, why high BOD is such a problem.

What it also is, is an entirely known problem. Generally, provincially, regionally, and specifically on Bowen Island. And high BOD wastewater is a known consequence – repeat the regions above – of the light industrial process for producing alcohol.

hint/trigger warning – what can high BOD water lead to?

??

The knowledge that cideries produce large quantities of high BOD wastewater is hardly a fringe opinion. Nor is the knowledge that contaminating surface and groundwater impacts watersheds, which support both water systems and individual wells. Nor the knowledge that there isn’t a neat and tidy distinction between surface and groundwater: as the Islands Trust puts it, in a 2021 document I’ll return to below,

Protection of surface water ecosystems and aquatic habitat values relies upon an understanding of the interactions and hydraulic connection between surface and groundwater

I’m about to make a number of points that were and are:

• entirely and uncontroversially true
• ignored, comprehensively and absolutely, by every single responsible government body re Riley’s Cidery

Ready?

• Cideries exist within a regulated, known framework for managing industrial production
• Administering that framework is entrusted to government bodies
• Those bodies have known, formal responsibilities for regulating and ensuring safe clean drinking water, and preserving ecosystems
• Cidery production is a form of light industry that produces recognised water pollution impacts
• The gulf islands (including Bowen) have small, complex, particular and highly interlinked networks of surface and ground water
• Those small networks are the sole source of supply for resident’s drinking water, and simultaneously support native ecosystems.
• Murray Creek and the land uses that surround it fall within a legally defined community watershed that supplies Grafton Lake, the source of drinking water for the Cove Bay system
• Where Murray Creek enters into Bowen Brook, there is a large wetland area
• That wetland area is a significant area for aquifer recharge
• The aquifer supports native wildlife and ecosystems (including the wetlands)
• The aquifer supplies drinking water via groundwater wells to multiple households

Every single government body we turned to do their job, every single public servant and elected representative we asked to meet their responsibilities failed us completely. They did not just less, but worse, than nothing.

cideries produce water pollution

Here is MetroVancouver’s guide, published in 2020, to its fermentation operations bylaw:

In November 2015, Metro Vancouver implemented a bylaw to reduce and prevent spent grains, fruit and yeast from smaller fermentation operations from going down the drain. The Fermentation Operations Bylaw applies to any business using yeast to produce alcoholic beverages and discharging up to 300 m3 (300,000 L) of wastewater into the sewer within 30 days, including brew pubs, cottage breweries, micro‑breweries, vint‑on‑premises, wineries, distilleries, cideries and u‑brews.

source: MetroVancouver Fermentation Operation Bylaw – access it here

MetroVan, Islands Trust – where does Bowen fit?

Bowen Island Municipality is part of the MetroVancouver Regional District, but is excepted from that Regional District’s overall management of sewers, water, (and roads), due to the particular local character of the island, and also to its continuing membership of the Islands Trust. These provisions extend back to the incorporation of the Municipality. See the incorporation Letters Patent for a sense of the complexity of Bowen Island’s municipal birth.

This very particular – entirely unique – political character for Bowen Island reflects the dual nature of government of Bowen Island prior to incorporation, where certain services were provided through the then Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), but land use governance was regulated by the Islands Trust.

The Islands Trust embarked on a new initiative in 2020, with funding from two watershed protection societies – the Freshwater Sustainability Strategy – which, they claim, “builds on decades of work to protect the water resources in the Islands Trust Area.”. In their 2021 report, they describe how

The Groundwater in the Islands Trust Area is mainly recharged in the rainy season, through delicate freshwater networks in limited fractured rock basins or small sand and gravel deposits. Groundwater is essential for ecosystem health and overall hydrological function of watersheds. In many places, this scarce resource is vulnerable to threats such as contamination from pollution caused by human activities, overuse, and saltwater intrusion, especially during the summer when demand is high and recharge is low…

Many island residents depend on groundwater for their drinking source. The majority of people rely on domestic wells…

Bowen Island’s Official Community Plan, and associated Land Use Bylaws, reflect, and were and are framed in respect to this dual history. That continues to be the case. Bowen Municipality is legally obliged to both “have regard for” and submit/refer policies and bylaws to the Islands Trust:

protect and preserve?

“Protect and preserve” most emphatically includes freshwater. Unsurprisingly, the Island’s Trust Policy statement includes commitments to freshwater, such as the directive that “water quality is maintained”

This inheritance informs many of the policies and land use bylaw provisions supposedly governing communal life on Bowen Island. Here’s just one relevant to consideration of Riley’s Cidery:

and you may ask yourself….

A number of questions.

Two very good ones would be why Daniel Martin, Bowen Island Manager of Planning and Development, when considering and then proposing the issuing of this temporary use permit,

• did not “have regard” for the Islands Trust mandate to protect and preserve, and
• did not note, in his summary of relevant OCP policies, policy 202

That would sit alongside the question of why he left Murray Creek out of the site plan he presented, or alongside questions about the multitude of relevant OCP policies and objectives he completely ignored, including policy 202.

Someone provided us, in early 2021, with a draft list of notes of some relevant OCP policies and objectives that were completely unaddressed by Daniel Martin in presenting and supporting the Riley’s Cidery TUP – you can view those notes here. That list is partial, reflecting their concerns – it doesn’t include the wastewater related policies I’m pointing to here.

But, together, it reinforces the fact that his consideration and presentation of the TUP, and the totality of the circumstances around its issuance, are suspect.

what was Daniel Martin thinking?

His entire summary of the OCP re Riley’s Cidery rested on two things:

1. the (then) current zoning of the Riley’s Cidery property
2. the basis for that zoning category in the OCP

and concluded that these were entirely supportive of issuing this TUP. But even do to that, he had to read the already very limited source he used in a very limited way.

From that OCP description (and prescription), he drew on only one word – agriculture – to then supply a definition that he presented as sufficient to allow for the cidery. The Agriculture definition is (or as we will see, importantly, was) in the Land Use Bylaw:

“AGRICULTURE” means the use of land, buildings or structures for the growing, rearing, producing or harvesting of crops, livestock and other animals subject to Provincial Regulation and includes the processing and sale of products harvested, reared or produced on that lot and the storage of machinery, implements and supplies for use by the agricultural operation, but excludes intensive agriculture, horticulture and vineyard.

in vino, or vineyards, veritas

You may have noticed the parenthetical then – “the (then) current zoning of the Riley’s Cidery property” -and the is, was distinction.

In a process that started in 2020, and was active through January, February March and April – that is, coterminous with the process for this TUP – Daniel Martin put forward “Bowen Island Municipality Land Use Bylaw No. 57, 2002, Amendment Bylaw No. 528, 2020“, described as merely housekeeping, “a bylaw to update elements of the Land Use Bylaw, focusing on synthesizing multiple definitions and amending general regulations“.

Buried in this, though was getting rid of the “vineyard” restriction on agriculture.

At the mid-point in the passage of the Riley’s Cidery TUP before Council, first presented February 22, 2021, passed March 22, 2021,

on March 11, Daniel hosted a Zoom open house for public review and consideration of Bowen Island Municipality Land Use Bylaw No. 57, 2002, Amendment Bylaw No. 528, 2020. Unsurprisingly, only one member of the public participated. Well, in fact it may be surprising that even one member of the public participated, given the less than compelling title.

A slide midway through this open house public presentation read:

Unused? Really?

“not useful to a vested interest” is not the same as “unused”

but one of these things is EXACTLY THE SAME as another…

Daniel went on, in that February 22 presentation, to propose:

Staff also propose that the TUP contain a definition cidery use as follows:
“CIDERY” means the use of buildings and structures for the production of cider, at a cidery
facility licensed by the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch, where at least 50% of the cider
production comes from fruit grown on the same lot, or from another lot which is part of the
same business. Imported British Columbia fruit used in the cidery shall be limited to no more
than 50% of cider production. A cidery may include cidery tours, cider tasting, cider sales, a
picnic area, and the sale of cidery promotional products.

A proposal not only enthusiastically taken up by Council, but rewritten in the meeting to reduce the percentage of supposedly local fruit used.

So much more to say. Much, much more.

Teasers? a couple…

1. My mother and I wrote to Council when this bylaw came up for second reading April 26, 2021, and to the Islands Trust. This would have been, should have been, a moment for the Islands Trust to do their job, meet their responsibilities – but – no.

They didn’t in fact discuss what we wrote about at all when they addressed our letter in their meeting, and despite not just minuting it as an action, but then telling us the Chair and chief planner would write to us, well, they never did.

2. Zoning, rezoning, Rob Purdy, and the municipality – a history.

One final point I’ll make now.

Daniel Martin could not have ignored, minimised, denied, concealed, pick your obstructive verb of choice, consideration of water, watersheds, and safe drinking water any more emphatically and comprehensively than he did. Still is (evidenced in his support for the renewal of Riley’s Cidery TUP on December 13, 2023). With CAO Liam Edwards providing full supportive cover.

Even if the cidery was purely and only agricultural – which it isn’t, but was his definition of choice – let’s look at another OCP policy, policy 216, with highlights added:

Agriculture will be regulated primarily on the basis of performance standards and best management practices rather than use. Regulations will relate to noise, nuisance, odours, disturbances, unsightly premises, and watershed management. Such standards should accommodate normal commercial agricultural practices as outlined in the Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act in a manner consistent with watershed management for drinking water protection and should be compatible with other land uses in all other areas.

When I look at professional regulation and guidelines, both in BC and more widely for managing winery and cidery production, it’ll be readily apparent that “best management practices” in this industry recognise, account for, and openly address wastewater impacts.

As I said, so much more to say.

back to the actual…Bowen Island style

But for now, I’m going to circle back to the knowledge embodied in a single one of those sources, MetroVancouver’s Fermentation Operations bylaw, the knowledge that cideries produce polluted wastewater. And that Bowen Island Municipality’s demonstrable knowledge of the risk of that pollution from alcohol production existed well prior to the proposal and issuing of the Temporary Use Permit for Riley’s Cidery.

A permit, not to overstate the incredibly blindingly obvious by now (I hope) fact, that they issued without any regard at all for risks they knew about, and with complete disregard for the OCP.

To get there, first I need to look at the formal process by which Riley’s Cidery came to be against the backdrop of Bowen Municipal knowledge of wastewater as a problem of alcohol production.

licencing

3 types of manufacturing licence

a cidery is a winery

BC regulation clearly defines the products that are produced under each of those three manufacturing types, using the wording cited below. You can read those descriptions on the official BC government website’s page on applying for a liquor manufacturing licence, linked here.

a cidery can be part of a farm

Each type of manufacturing licence has two sub-types:

The land based winery and craft distillery options are intended to support BC agricultural production. They have requirements for the use of BC agricultural products that do not apply to the other categories, but offer reciprocating benefits. These include tax benefits, higher mark-ups for producers, and increased access to sales outlets (farmer’s markets for instance).

There is also some crossover with provisions and goals encompassed by the ALR – the Agricultural Land Reserve. This is a provincial land zoning designation.

Land “placed” in the ALR is governed by the Agricultural Land Commission. The ALC regulation allows for “Alcohol Production” as a farm use, but the cidery or other alcohol production facility also requires exactly the same manufacturing licencing as non-ALR licensees.

anyway…

All land based wineries in the Province are in essence light industrial farm uses.

and Riley’s Cidery operates under a land based winery licence.

Riley’s Cidery is a light industry

BC Assessment provides defined information on the real-world identity – the actual use – of used and inhabited land in the province. There are nine property classifications they apply, light industry being Class 5.

And, definitively, wineries are light industry. Indeed, so definitively, that one of the few specific uses that BC Assessment use to demonstrate this class in their notes on the distinction between light industry and other classifications is wineries:

When I come to consider VCH’s involvement, complicated and messy as that is, one pertinent question would (should) be why their process for approving the cidery fell under Food Premises Regulation. That it did is something Rob and Christine made clear in their March 18 letter to Council – “we have no food service, but this Regulation applies to our cider production“. I alluded to this letter and set of issues in a previous post, in the context of the false reassurance don’t worry, Vancouver Coastal Health will take care of it.

As the BC Assessment distinction makes clear, alcohol production is distinctly separate from the “production or storage of food and non-alcoholic beverages” – one (alcohol) being strongly industrial in nature versus the other being business/commercial manufacturing without that level of industrial footprint.

Cider production is an industrial use with very significant water impacts. So significant in fact that any such operation anywhere other than Bowen Island in the MetroVancouver Regional District, a region under Vancouver Coastal Health’s purview, would be subject to the fermentation operations bylaw I cited above.

bowen island’s industrial base

2023 assessment records show that, of the nine classes, six are relevant for properties on Bowen Island:

A couple of relevant points. First, the numbers don’t reflect pure one to one equivalences – they don’t match each acre of property exactly to one class (or revenue category). Nor are they 100% accurate up to the minute knowledge – it can take a while for BC Assessment to catch up with land use changes.

Something that is not readily apparent, or known generally, is that a single property, or lot, can have multiple classes attached to it in proportionate levels, according to the range of activities on that lot:

Split Classification

Property with several distinct uses can fall into more than one class. For example, commercial and residential space might be combined in one building, or a property combines residential, farm and forest land. In these cases, BC Assessment determines the share of the value of the property attributable to each class.

source: https://info.bcassessment.ca/Services-products/property-classes-and-exemptions/understanding-property-classes-and-exemptions, retrieved Apr 29, 2023

A property with a land based winery on it – or in this case, cidery – would likely be assessed as simultaneously farm, residential, business, and light industrial.

I had a lengthy conversation with someone from BC Assessment to explore this, years ago now, before the opening of Riley’s Cidery, when I was trying to properly understand the issues. We went through the assessments of cideries all over the province, including on the Gulf Islands, and they were all assessed as light industrial for that portion of their activities.

Ok, back to water pollution

The only type of industry on Bowen Island, both in fact and in the framing allowed by the OCP, is light industry.

As policy 202 indicates above, light industry must prove adequate water supply and waste disposal capability to ensure that there is no deleterious effect on surface and ground-water supplies, or to the long term sustainability of these resources.

I tried, valiantly, for months, with my mother, to see that proof, or even just to find out that anyone was establishing anything even remotely related to such proof, and was driven into the ground by the effort.

I’ll get to the efforts we made via the Bowen Municipal bylaw process – not even, by now, a spoiler alert to say that got less than nowhere.

One thing we did raise in that effort, with CAO Liam Edwards, Manager of Planning and Development Daniel Martin and then Bylaw Manager Bonny Brokenshire, was the explicit requirement in Bowen Island’s Land Use Bylaw (LUB) on the siting of light industry near watercourses.

Section 4.9 of the LUB re industrial uses, mandating setbacks from watercourses:

Section 3.18 sets the basic setback at 30m, which is found throughout the LUB for most land and building uses; industrial uses increase that to 50m.

And, again, barely requiring a spoiler alert, the cidery, its irrigation practices, waste management, are most assuredly not setback 50m from Murray Creek.

The section of the LUB referred to here covers the industrial zones IM and IC; although a Light Industrial Development Permit Area was added at the same time as a new Comprehensive Development Zone (CD 22) in 2017, neither in that zoning or in the light industrial development permit guidelines is there any information for setbacks from watercourses – which is weird. However, there is the requirement that

All uses must not be noxious or offensive to any adjacent property or the general public by reason of emitting odours, dust, smoke, gas, noise, effluent, radiation, broadcast interference, glare, humidity, heat, vibration, or hazard

Again, that would be a fail for the cidery on not emitting noxious and offensive effluent and hazard to an adjacent property – precisely the questions and concerns we wanted addressed before the TUP was issued.

three types of manufacturers, three Bowen Island precedents

As set out above, there are three manufacturing methods for making alcohol, summarised in the LCRB’s licence types,

• brewery
• distillery
• winery

And Bowen Island has had experience with all three, and in all three cases, preceding the TUP for Riley’s Cidery, experience with them as waste and water polluting problems.

Two date back to before municipal incorporation.

First – the brewery. Bowen Island Brewing Co. is still active, but was based on Bowen (in Artisan Square) for less than a year – as they describe in their website’s “Our Story” section,

Bowen Island Brewing opened for business on Bowen Island in 1986 but quickly found brewing on the island difficult, due to high production costs and complex logistics. So, less than a year later, Bowen moved to brew beer on a barge under the Second Narrows Bridge

source: Bowen Island Brewing Co. Our Story retrieved Apr 28, 2024

As Councillor Nicholson’s comments on February 22 make clear, those costs and complex logistics related to waste – as she said, “the property that I used to own was the site of the Bowen Island Brewery and the disposition of the waste was a significant issue on that property“.

The blanket prohibition on those uses was first articulated and adopted in the 1990s in response to this particular case by the Island’s Trust (who then governed land use management on Bowen). The concerns and reason for prohibition were – any guesses? – all about winery waste/wastewater entering watersheds and streams. The prohibition was carried into the LUB when Bowen Island became a municipality, and through two OCP review cycles.

Until, that is, as described above, Daniel Martin got rid of the prohibition in an omnibus housekeeping bylaw amendment.

And distillery

In the summer of 2019, the Copper Spirit Distillery opened in Snug Cove; the owners describe the process as one in which “it took them over 5 years to build the distillery from the ground up“.

There is an extensive set of municipal records on the development process – involving variance permits, parking issues, design approvals, building permits and on.

And there is recording of the distillery as presenting the issue of high BOD wastewater as a known outcome of industrial alcohol production, dating back to 2017, and progressing through multiple stages of the – problematic? – story of the Snug Cove Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).

The Distillery is in the Cove, and is part of the very small area on Bowen Island served by the single municipal sewage system – the Snug Cove Sewer system. Wastewater entering that sewage system is processed through the Snug Cove Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). Some waste (sludge) and wastewater is also transhipped to the Annacis Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, the regional MetroVancouver hub.

Capacity and other structural problems with the WWTP are just one of several controversial, expensive and ongoing (for years) water and sewage issues facing Bowen Island. I’ll get into those, and the Riley’s Cidery piece of that larger, costly, story in later posts.

For now, I’ll just point to one document prepared in 2017, as part of the permitting process for the distillery, a Technical Memorandum Re: DISTILLERY WASTEWATER DISCHARGE: Impact of Distillery Effluent on Snug Cove WWTP Capacity

Councillor Sue Ellen Fast was, as Council representative on the committee, involved in the 2017 discussion at the Snug Cove Sewer System Local Advisory Committee about this:

Source: Minutes of the Snug Cove Sewer Management Committee Meeting held Thursday, August 10, 2017, retrieved Apr. 29, 2024.

There was a later report prepared by Urban Systems in 2020 which, again, looked at the distillery’s wastewater impacts as a distinct (in fact the only distinct, separate category) of wastewater. Besides Daniel Martin, every single Councillor who was involved in the TUP process for Riley’s Cidery had, as the saying goes, eyes on this material.

thoughts?

In 2023, the owners of the distillery wrote twice to Bowen Municipal Council complaining about what they claimed was the unfair and unreasonable imposition on them alone, “the only operation that falls under the “light industrial” designation“, of property tax billing from 2022. It appears that starting in 2022 BC Assessment had caught up with the distillery land use; the owners claimed it was unfair as “It’s hard to imagine what extra strain on infrastructure and services our operations have” and that “we don’t use the Bowen infrastructure more than any other local business…We are not a typical Vancouver industrial site. We produce no industrial waste of any kind“.

This was somewhat disingenuous – the 2017 report shows they were well aware, even before opening, of the extra-strain and industrial waste dimension of their business.

But I bring it up to point to some larger things, moving through the post I’ve written above.

First of all, Bowen Island doesn’t exist in a magical space outside reality. BIM is very quick to deflect to that larger world when they don’t want to or can’t address a problem. Sophie Idsinga, then Interim Corporate Officer, regularly Communications Coordinator, responded on behalf of BIM:

Thanks for your e-mail. It has been received by Council, and will be included in the upcoming
Council agenda under Information Items.

A review of your property’s classification is outside the Municipality’s jurisdiction. This is a
function of BC Assessment.

Secondly, in the original BIM commissioning of a report, there was a concern to create a paper trail “should the payment of these costs become contentious“. By 2023, costs associated with the WWTP were most certainly highly contentious – and not just costs for that particular piece of the island’s water/sewage infrastructure. Bowen Islanders are facing years of increased costs and property taxes to meet infrastructure challenges – see the 2022 Bowen Island Undercurrent story on property taxes for a snapshot. For views on the question of who pays, listen to the episode of the Bowen Island podcast called Snug Cove Sewer – Who pays?.

Along with the WWTP, there are ongoing issues with the Cove Bay Water Treatment plant, Eaglecliff water, Bowen Bay water, the Snug Cove Sewer outfall…

Thirdly, when you read through the BIM record on Copper Spirit and wastewater, there is a familiar fuzzy imprecision, a not quite addressing simply, concisely, potential risks. Bob Robinson intuited those risks, wanted to begin to account for them, but that intuition went nowhere. It’s all conjecture about levels of waste, guesses about potential impacts – how about, as in the MetroVancouver bylaw, just requiring a record of actual numbers and dates? Or, with Riley’s Cidery, just requiring real, public information about production levels and waste management? Not actually that complicated, or unreasonable. But somehow impossible. Which ought to be interrogated.

This is symptomatic of BIM as a polity.

What is inside the Municipality’s jurisdiction is too often just not done very well, or honestly, or conscientiously, but, increasingly, is glossed with a simulacrum of professionalism, and haute-bureaucratese. Plus a top-dressing of enviro and folksy frosting, the empty application of words like sustainability and community. And alongside this, there is an absence of any real accountability, or learning from mistakes (impossible if you can’t admit them). I fear too they indicate something worse than just error – a fear intensified by the habitual doubling down, concealing, fuzzy misframing rhetoric staff hide behind.

There ought to be an examination, an explanation for Daniel Martin’s handling of this TUP. Will there be?

And these mistakes damage lives. They’ve damaged mine.

And they are a profound disservice to the public, who then end up literally paying the price for entirely preventable, avoidable, and predictable harms. Which repeat, but worse than that, fester and grow.

This rather discursive conclusion has been prompted by a somewhat discursive post, but never fear, it is all going somewhere. As I hope this post indicates, there are intersecting political and governance concerns with very grave and real world consequences in actual lives, and for Bowen Island, with Riley’s Cidery sitting on a giant red X to mark the spot. I’ll continue in my next posts to pull on the threads indicated here, with a focus that will (has to) move both close and far.