“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
On February 22, 2021, Bowen Municipal Council voted to bring forward the Temporary Use Permit proposal for Riley’s Cidery for their next but one meeting on March 22, 2021. The process meant they could take a final vote then and approve the permit, and the cidery could open – this was the bare minimum of time it could take to pass this permit, and see the Cidery legally open.
So, Council were ready, at the meeting of March 22, 2021, to consider the TUP for the second time, and if they felt so moved, fully approve its passage and allow the operation of Riley’s Cidery. On March 22, 2021, this is what they did, and once again, they did so unanimously and enthusiastically.
This post takes us right to the brink of their decision; the next will take us over that edge.
first, the framework
Council can’t, in theory, actually just make up the rules as they go along – the existence and authority of a Municipal Council is defined by a whole set of legal frameworks and conditions, including most particularly the Official Community Plan (OCP). The Bowen Island OCP was revised in June 2020 to include the following re Temporary Use Permits:
The Municipality may consider issuing temporary land use permits provided the use will not create an unacceptable negative impact upon the natural environment or the character of the neighbourhood. Permits shall be issued in accordance with the Local Government Act. All areas within Bowen Island Municipality boundaries are designated Temporary Use Permit Areas
https://bowenisland.civicweb.net/document/230921/
So the OCP mandates two necessary conditions for any TUP – it cannot create an unacceptable negative impact upon:
- the natural environment
- the character of the neighbourhood
the character of the neighbourhood
The neighbourhood of the proposed cidery was most immediately the cul de sac formed by Westside and Laura Roads; there are in total eleven homes directly accessed on those roads. Of those, seven submitted to Council their opposition to issuing this TUP on serious and considered grounds.
Just sit with that for a moment.
Seven out of ten neighbours, 70%, said that this proposal profoundly violated their sense of the identity and character of their neighbourhood.
On March 22, 2021, at the meeting at which the TUP was finally and unanimously approved by Council, there was an enacted performance of simultaneous consideration and contempt for those neighbours. That served as cover for a manufactured pretence of conformity with the requirement to not negatively impact the character of the neighbourhood. That performance, by Rob Purdy, Christine Hardie, and members of Council, centred on a whole symphony of play on the theme of those neighbours’ failures of understanding.
the natural environment
Several of those neighbours raised serious and articulated environmental concerns in written submissions to Council for consideration on March 22. Two spoke to environmental issues related to water in the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting on March 22. The submission my mother and I made to Council is accessible here, and includes our concerns about water.
Unlike the prohibition on negatively impacting the character of the neighbourhood, the impact on the natural environment didn’t even get a pretence of concern at the meeting of March 22, 2021. At that meeting, at which the TUP was finally and unanimously approved by Council, there was no sustained or informed discussion of the environmental and in particular water impacts of the proposed cidery. What there was subsumed any environmental concerns about water into a minor and secondary subcategory of the neighbours’ defining failure to understand.
second, the focus
Later posts will look in more detail at the neighbourhood question in relation to this TUP, at the construction of TUPs and the corrupted nature and history of their use on Bowen Island, among a whole series of other concerns.
Here, now, the preceding lead-in is to allow an informed look in closer focus, with a dialled in lens, at the ridiculous and nonsensical framing of the issue of the water safety in the actual proceedings of this TUP.
February 22, 2021: taking flight
On February 22, there was an exchange between Councillor Nicholson and the applicants, Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie, on the issues of water and waste: this was the only discussion of the issue at that meeting.
Councillor Maureen Nicholson opened by saying:
“This is a distraction question for for Rob and needn’t be answered right now, but I’m curious about how you will deal with the waste from the production. Is there a short answer or do we have a long conversation later?“
Rob Purdy replied, No, there’s a good answer for that…
Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie then went into a lengthy discussion of feeding waste to the deer, who loved it, but Councillor Nicholson then clarified what she was curious about:
I was just, I was curious because 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.
And Rob Purdy reassured her:
It’s a very different process. Our process is just apples and apple juice. There’s one input into cider, a real cider, and it’s fruit juice,, just pure 100%.
So there’s no water, nothing going in. Breweries, I’m not as familiar, but they have hops and whatnot. They have lots of other inputs that go into it. So there’s there’s more waste, but there’s one input it’s 100% fruit juice and nothing else going in. So it’s just really from when you press and, yeah, the more we can compost here as well. So we’re we’re starting to get that going, we’re getting more coordinated on on how to do that, but to have soils on site that we can we can use is something we’ll be doing.
There’s a lot to say about this, but for now, just note that this shows a remarkable inability to notice – or mention or understand – the difference between input and output:
So there’s no water, nothing going in. Breweries, I’m not as familiar, but they have hops and whatnot. They have lots of other inputs that go into it. So there’s there’s more waste, but there’s one input it’s 100% fruit juice and nothing else going in.
This is something I struggle to find polite words to describe – it is nonsense. And it is, or ought to be, embarrassing that this came to be – as we will see – the municipality’s last word on water waste.
Water may not go into the fermentation tank with the apple juice being processed to make cider, but that is completely irrelevant to consideration of the output of cider production – which is a lot of highly contaminated water waste.
next time:
Council passes the TUP on March 22, 2021.
The TUP process that allowed the opening of Riley’s Cidery in 2021 was a collective act, for which Bowen Island Municipal Council, staff, and the proponents of Riley’s Cidery, Rob Purdy and Christine Hardie, all bear responsibility. Theirs were actions that abdicated real responsibility or serious care and concern for their community, that treated fantasy as fact, that helped to cement dangerous delusions as reasonable and praiseworthy things in the public imagination, and that created the conditions that led to this:
