“Magnificent. Very positive. Very encouraging. Long overdue. Very much needed.”
Do you get the sense that after years of frustration about problems caused by derelict boats and the behaviour of some people living on boats in Mannion Bay, Bruce Russell was one happy man on Tuesday morning?
“I’m grateful for all the support,” he said after Bowen Island council passed a resolution that will see the municipality eventually take control of the bay (which is also called Deep Bay.)
When Russell and a delegation of close to two dozens supporters of Friends of Mannion Bay arrived in the council chambers, prepared to state their case about why such controls are needed, Mayor Murray Skeels told them that they would be “pushing against a door that is already open.”
Before council was a detailed strategy outlined by Bonny Brokenshire, senior bylaw service officer:
• obtain a Licence of Occupation for the 38 hectares of water from the east end of Sandy Beach to the opposite point near the end of Ecclestone Road, a process that could take up to 140 days
• create land-use bylaw amendments governing the use of the bay, including putting a two-week limit on how long people anchor their boats in the bay
• come up with bylaw enforcement strategies (the RCMP was also in attendance at the meeting) and
• get involved with social planning.
It did not take long for council to unanimously pass the motion to start the application process, earning the applause of the people gathered in the room. (Russell also presented Brokenshire with a bouquet of flowers in appreciation of her commitment to the file.)
In the past weeks, council has received a raft of letters from people who had deep concerns about what was happening in the bay, everything from abandoned boats, to people living on boats without proper black water systems, to noise, to crude behaviour, to drug use that spills into the Cove, to unsightly garbage, to people beaching their boats so they could use the beach as their workshop.
Many of the people on the presenters’ list started by talking about how long they’d lived or cottaged on the bay and how this pristine oasis has changed over the years, especially after False Creek started to forbid anchoring for more than two weeks at a time.
Brokenshire said that, at present, there are three floating docks in Mannion Bay, one of which is legal, 42 mooring buoys and 31 vessels. In early 2013, the municipality removed 29 mooring buoys that were non-complying.
Her case for getting the Licence of Occupation was based on restoring the socio-ecological balance of the bay. This includes protecting marine life and the cultural values of island life. It also includes being able to regulate the swimming area off Sandy Beach and the municipal portion of the beach for which it already has an LOA.
Originally, her plan also included a fifth point — an environmental assessment. That is a large undertaking so it was felt it was best to move ahead with the LOA application first.
