Multiple expert studies have been handed to the village council in the past decade, but recommendations not acted upon
In April 2022, a geoscience consultant warned Lions Bay council that climate change could bring more landslides and debris flows of varying sizes, and laid out steps that could reduce risks.
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It was the second time since 2018 that the council had examined the risk of landslides, debris flows and rockfalls — and what might be done to mitigate them.
But the councils during the past six years have not acted on concerns raised by the 2022 warning or the earlier report from consulting firm Cordilleran Geoscience.
Brent Ward, a Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor, says every community that has a risk of landslides and other geo-hazards should be taking these risks seriously.
“You have to actually look at what the problem is and act on it,” said Ward, co-director of the centre for natural hazards research at SFU.
Concerns about landslide and debris flow risks reignited this week after a mudslide swept through a home in Lions Bay along the Sea to Sky Highway corridor, killing at least one person. A search continues for a second missing person.
Jakob told the council it was important to establish risk tolerance thresholds and that the adoption of development permit areas and natural hazard assessment areas was a key element, something the District of North Vancouver had done after a deadly slide in 2005.
It has been left to communities to establish these risk or safety levels because the B.C. and Canadian governments, unlike in places such as Hong Kong and Switzerland, have not set a provincial or countrywide standard, which was recommended by a coroner’s inquest into the District of North Vancouver fatal slide.
“A well thought-out process is crucial in addressing emerging geo-hazards,” Jakob told councillors.
The report also recommended the village get an expert to estimate debris flows on several creeks and run risk scenarios using that new information, and also have an expert estimate the frequency and magnitude of open-slope landslides affecting Lions Bay using computer modelling.
A review by Postmedia of council minutes since the April 2022 meeting shows there has been no further investigation of geo-hazards and the issues raised by the Cordilleran report and the Jakob presentation.
In the fall of 2022, a largely new council was voted in, including a new mayor, Ken Berry.
Asked Friday why the geo-hazard issues have not been on the council’s agenda and whether that would change as a result of the recent deadly landslide, in a written response Berry said the province, Metro Vancouver and the village will conduct appropriate reviews in due course.
“As you can imagine, our focus is on the recovery of one of our residents and the safety of our first responders,” said Berry.
During the April 2022 meeting, one Lions Bay resident had questioned how much risk there was from landslides and debris flows as there were a lot of rock outcroppings on the mountain slopes and the soils weren’t deep.
Another resident, Marcus Reuter, raised concerns at the April 2022 meeting that creating development permit areas could lead to restrictive covenants being placed on properties, which could decrease their value. Reuter, who was elected to the Lions Bay council in the fall of 2022, did not respond to a request for an interview.
Last weekend’s mudslide swept away the home of David and Barbara Enns. The family has said that the one body recovered is David’s.
The slide spilled across the busy Sea to Sky Highway and down to Howe Sound, carrying with it mud, rocks and trees. It occurred during a windstorm that hit the South Coast during the weekend.
The Village of Lions Bay has said the slide began in an area around Battani Creek.
The area the landslide originated on is provincial land, just outside the village boundaries of Lions Bay.
The provincial government was unable to say this week what landslide risk projects were built along the Sea to Sky Highway corridor and how much they cost.
Ross Blackwell, Lions Bay’s new chief administrative officer, said it is most likely that the province built and paid for the projects to protect the highway below, as the city would not have been able to do so. “It would have bankrupted us,” he said.
While the District of North Vancouver has been a leader in establishing landslide risk tolerance levels and carrying out projects to reduce risk, district officials say managing these risks at a municipal-level is incredibly challenging.
“With our changing climate, these natural hazards are unpredictable, and engineering mitigation is expensive with individual projects often costing millions of dollars. Policy changes can also restrict development in a region with a housing supply shortage,” said Peter Cohen, the district’s general manager, engineering infrastructure services.
Ward, the SFU earth sciences professor, says the house swept away in Lions Bay was close to the creek at a bend in the waterway. It seems clear the debris flow jumped the creek and hit the house, he said.
A hazard assessment of that location could have recommended a berm before the house was built, or moving it further away from the creek, Ward said.
But he added that smaller communities, especially small First Nations communities, may not have the resources to hire the consulting expertise to detail the risks and pay to mitigate them.
“It’s a huge issue,” said Ward.