Richmond’s Garden City Lands

Update added late on May 22: When last seen, the Scotch invaders were retreating.

Ecology has a lot to do with balance. On International Biodiversity Day, May 22, 2009, Michael Wolfe will draw on his skills as a conservation biologist, educator, and Garden City Lands expert to guide humans who care about the ecological balance of the lands.

This year, the theme of International Biodiversity Day is invasive alien species. One could think of it as Invasive Species Day, and we do.

Humans have had a lot to do with Garden City Lands invasive species like Himalayan blackberry and Scotch heather. Richmond humans even buy Scotch heather for their gardens, but the seeds that find their way to the bog do a lot of harm to native species by crowding them out. Michael will help the human visitors to distinguish harmful invaders from natives.

Unlike most invaders, humans can help restore the balance. In a symbolic but useful way, the Michael-led humans will do that. Fortunately, the bog is pretty good at resisting the Himalayen blackberry, so it won’t be necessary to root out thorny brambles. Fortunately also, humans can vanquish the relentlessly invading Scotch heather with their bare hands, although gloves such as old work gloves are recommended.

On Invasive Species Day, eco-touring humans can pace themselves as they see fit, and the battle with the Scotch invaders will take no more than a third of the ninety-minute tour time. Still, the human action will be a step in the right direction, and the lands will be a little more ecologically balanced at the end.

The Invasive Species eco-tour of the Garden City Lands starts at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 22. Please read more about it and join in.

This post is essentially my five-minute presentation at the surprise council meeting of May 11, 2009, as promised in the “Results of surprise . . .” post.

Mayor and Councillors,

I suggest that the lands in the proposed agricultural zone in the Regional Growth Strategy should include all lands that are either zoned agricultural by Richmond or part of the Agricultural Land Reserve unless council makes specific decisions to exclude some of them before passing on its input to Metro Vancouver.

I will use the Garden City Lands as an example because it is the most glaring omission from the agricultural areas in Map 4.

The Garden City Lands are zoned AG1, Agricultural, by the City of Richmond, so I suggest that it is natural for Richmond to ensure that the property is included as agricultural in the Regional Growth Strategy. If there’s a good reason why the property should not be included, then I believe it should be up to our elected council to rezone the property as something other than AG1 or 2, Agricultural. I am asking that this be a council decision, not something that slips past, buried in an 85-page staff report.

And there are further reasons why the Garden City Lands should be designated as agricultural in the Regional Growth Strategy. They are in the ALR, and they are fertile farmland. The property has always remained in the Agricultural Land Reserve despite intense challenges to that status from powerful speculators, including the fattest application the Agricultural Land Commission has ever seen. In response, the commission has repeatedly affirmed that the Garden City Lands are prime farmland and belong in the reserve. It has repeatedly stated that the lands are capable of agriculture and suitable for agriculture. There is probably no parcel of land in Metro Vancouver that has been more emphatically shown to belong in the current Green Zone and the proposed agricultural zone.

Strategy 2.3 in the Regional Growth Strategy is to “protect the region’s supply of agricultural land and encourage its use for food production,” and I encourage council to firmly support it and not go along with toothless lip service. On a more specific level, I’m suggesting that council specify that the Garden City Lands must be added to the region’s agricultural zone.

One final point. The Garden City Lands were evidently left out of the existing Green Zone. No one seems to remember how that happened. In any case, the Agricultural Land Commission’s decisions have surely shown that the property does belong in the Green Zone. I suggest that council consider asking Metro Vancouver to include the Garden City Lands in the Green Zone immediately. That will ensure that the property gets included in the proposed regional agricultural zone if it goes ahead, and it will also ensure that Metro Vancouver will treat the Garden City Lands properly even if the Regional Growth Strategy gets stalled.

As an earlier post describes, some Richmond candidates in British Columbia’s May 12, 2009, election have already acted to help save the Garden City Lands. There are now various ways our MLAs can help ensure a green future for the lands for community benefit. That is true even though the province is not a party* to the basic Garden City Lands agreement, the memorandum of understanding known as “the MOU.” The BC government and MLAs can:

1. Keep the Agricultural Land Commission strong and faithful to its purpose.

2. Urge the Musqueam Indian Band to partner in keeping the Garden City Lands green for the benefit of the community where the lands are located, moving forward together with the Richmond community in the spirit of the 2008 Musqueam Reconciliation Agreement.

3. Urge Canada Lands Company to ensure that any transfer of the Garden City Lands (whether to the City of Richmond, a federal department, or any other party) occurs for local community benefit for permitted uses under the province’s Agricultural Land Commission Act.

4. Provide provincial collaboration in Garden City Lands uses that naturally involve the province, e.g., Kwantlen Polytechnic University urban agriculture education, agriculture, and affordable housing (as discussed in “15. Homelessness + GCL”).

5. Urge the federal government to support transfer of the lands to a suitable party, such as the City of Richmond or a land conservancy, for ALR-permitted purposes at a suitable price, most likely the fair market value stated in the MOU, although some citizens are adament that it should be one dollar. (For legal assurance that the intent is honoured, a covenant on the title would make sense.)

Other ideas? Please suggest them via a comment or email.

___________

* Note: The parties to the MOU are the federal and Richmond governments, Canada Lands Company, and the Musqueam Indian Band. The MOU is currently at the stage where there should be renegotiation of certain conditions that can no longer be met, primarily because the property has not been—and very clearly should never be—removed from the BC Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

The Garden City Lands Coalition as a group is not involved in the referendum on BC-STV (single-transferable vote), the new voting system recommended almost unanimously by the Citizens Assembly, 160 citizens from every part of British Columbia. However, I noticed at a public meeting on the issue at the Richmond Culture Centre that all the people there who have taken significant roles in saving the Garden City Lands were on the Yes side, even though they had connections to all three parties running Richmond candidates in the May 12 election.

Maybe the common factor, crossing both party lines and issues, was a shared commitment to the community voice being heard and represented. In any case, here’s my personal view, as expressed in a brief note that I’ve sent to a newspaper:

The campaign against BC-STV is drilling a scare word, “complicated,” into our minds.

But the reality is simple. Under BC-STV there are five chances out of six that your vote will help elect someone you want.

True, BC-STV requires more counting, which the computers will easily handle. Since it enables most votes to matter, not be wasted, that is good.

If you want a longer explanation, I recommend the YouTube video of Christy Clark’s endorsement of BC-STV on her CKNW talk show.

Please visit our very special new page, “Earth awareness,” by guest blogger Howard Jampolsky. Well known in Richmond, Howard is a businessman, officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Pacific Region), and politically active citizen. In this well-informed column, Howard relates the Garden City Lands issue to Earth awareness and his own identity and encourages the reader to do likewise.

Click “16. Earth awareness” in the left menu to read Howard Jampolsky’s column in this window. Or, to read it in a new window, click this Earth awareness link.

This post is a follow-up to the excellent “Optimal community value—CLC” post by guest blogger Carol Southgate. Besides publishing that message on this blog and in both Richmond newspapers, Carol sent it to Mark Laroche, the president of Canada Lands Company, with a cover letter dated March 29, 2009. At the same time, Carol forwarded the cover letter to the Garden City Lands Coalition with permission to use it at the appropriate time. We felt that we should wait before posting it in order to allow a little to allow time for a Laroche reply. No reply has been received yet, but we’ve waited long enough. Here is the cover letter, which we hope you will find as illuminating as what Carol wrote before.

Please take a new look at the way Canada Lands Company implements its mandate in its stewardship of the Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC. I explained the need to the people of Richmond in the enclosed letter that the Richmond papers published online and in print (Richmond News, March 18, and Richmond Review, March 19).

That letter focuses on the future, but for your background I will also comment on past experience. As a grower and a member of the Richmond Agricultural Advisory Committee (RAAC), I did not find that Canada Lands’ project management of the application to exclude the Garden City Lands from the BC Agricultural Land Reserve was beneficial to the community. In brief, these are just two of many possible examples:

·        An Agricultural Endowment Fund idea featured in the application, though never endorsed by the RAAC, would have divisively set “bona fide farmers” (large conventional growers with little understanding of urban agriculture) against smaller growers, leading to the loss of a lot more farmland and harming local food security.

·        No sensitivity has been shown to the property being largely peatland, which requires much different management strategies than any other type of land.

Your corporate plan says, “Through fulfilling its mandate, CLCL takes pride in strengthening the many communities in which it operates across Canada . . . and attempts to enhance the quality of life in local communities.” Your company still has a great opportunity to make that sentiment a reality in Richmond, and I wish you success. Please think about what I am suggesting and let me know what you come up with. I very much look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
[Signed]
Carol Southgate

Jessica Lai’s “Guest shot” column, published online and in the April 9 Richmond Review newspaper, provides insight into the difficulty of understanding the Garden City Lands issue.

Her simple advice combines idealism with common sense. If I’ve grasped the gist, it comes down to this:

If Canada Lands Company, the party that has had the greatest control for the past four years, acts on its stated principles, it will be doing what is best for the community. It will then be able to win public support while telling the truth in a straightforward way. Individual citizens and the whole community will be empowered.

There is a human-resources rule of thumb that past performance is the best predictor of future performance, and in that context it remains a huge challenge to somehow get Canada Lands Company to put its high-sounding principles into practice, with lasting good results for the Garden City Lands. That said, Jessica Lai has brought the goal a little closer.

People often mention that the Garden City Lands issue is complicated. It is time to try again to simplify it. How is the following attempt at a current summary? All constructive advice is welcome, either in a comment below this blog post or via email to the Coalition. (Apparently we have a shy readership, since they mainly go the email route, but informative blog comments are nice to get too.)

The Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC, are a 55-hectare (136-acre) green space on the east side of the City Centre area. About 2 km south of the Oak Street Bridge, the lands stretch from Alderbridge Way to Westminster Highway and from Garden City Road to No. 4 Road.

Although it looks placid, the green space is the centre of a values clash: development for vast immediate profit versus conservation with environmental and food-security aims for long-term community value.

In 2005, the federal government entrusted the property to the federal land disposer, Canada Lands Company, for uses described in a memorandum of agreement (MOU).

Under that agreement, the company and the Musqueam Indian Band planned to split the profits from rezoning of at least half the property for high-density construction. The City of Richmond hoped to get the rest, which would have been scattered throughout the lands.

The property has been in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) ever since the ALR was established over thirty-five years ago to protect BC’s scarce farmland, which was being lost to uses that increased short-term worth at the expense of long-term food security.

The ALR has been continuously both widely supported and widely threatened. The desirability of food security has been obvious enough, but the prospect of windfall profits from changing farmland into residential and commercial land was a powerful motivator to chip away at the reserve.

In 2006, the Agricultural Land Commission rejected Canada Lands Company’s first application to remove the property from the ALR. The commission said that it is fertile farmland and the applicant had not even shown community needs for the land.

The company, band, and city then began a second application to remove the property from the ALR, this time a massive 16-month undertaking with the city as the nominal applicant, as it would have greater credibility with the commission. The company (Canada Lands) retained full control as project manager for the application.

In 2007, citizens reported that the project’s phone “survey” about the reapplication with 508 residents made false statements, manipulating opinion under the guise of gathering it. That was evidently an eye-opener that prompted rapid growth in public awareness about the issue.

Community groups brought forward alternative plans such as the Richmond Sustainable Food Systems Park, a proposed agricultural park that would facilitate urban agriculture education, feed the needy, and give city dwellers space to grow food, enjoy trails around a reservoir lake, and come together in a tranquil setting. Some envisioned it as an idyllic place for tai chi.

In early 2008, citizens and groups who wanted to keep the space green for community values formed the Garden City Lands Coalition Society to facilitate effective action.

In February 2008, citizens reported that the ALR-removal project’s open houses and a related survey were misleading the public about the reapplication. In particular, the stated premise of a survey question that solicited approval was that the proposed development would be “Smart Growth.” In a subsequent letter to Richmond council, the executive director of Smart Growth BC explained why it would definitely not be Smart Growth.

In March 2008, citizens addressed Richmond council in a six-day public hearing, with a strong majority urging council not to put forward the reapplication to the Agricultural Land Commission.

When the reapplication went ahead anyway, almost two thousand citizens signed a petition to the Agricultural Land Commission asking it to keep the Garden City Lands in the ARL.

Citizens also sent almost two hundred detailed submissions to the Agricultural Land Commission, with well over ninety percent opposed, principally arguing that community needs would be better met with the property kept in the ALR, not removed and also making the case that the proposed development would cause a major loss for food security and the environment.

Political support for saving the Garden City Lands has progressively grown, with clear support from the Richmond East MLA from the beginning, landslide victories for supportive MP candidates in both Richmond ridings in October 2008 (with a landslide defeat for one pro-development incumbent MP), and then an election-aided Richmond council shift to a pro-conservation majority at the end of 2008.

In February 2009, the Agricultural Land Commission rejected the reapplication to remove the Garden City Lands from the ALR. The commission confirmed the property’s agricultural potential and did not comment at all on the applicant’s lengthy community-need arguments, implicitly indicating they had no merit.

Since Canada Lands Company had argued that the property is not suitable for agriculture because parts were debilitated by federal uses, the commission essentially said that the owner should rehabilitate them.

The effect is that the high-density development is not permitted, so that aspect of the basic agreement cannot be met.

Under that Garden City Lands agreement (the MOU), Canada Lands Company, the Musqueam Indian Band, and the City of Richmond are expected to renegotiate conditions that cannot be met.

If the renegotiation is not successful, the company and band can terminate the agreement, but only after the four parties, which include the federal government, first cooperate to restore each to the position it was in before entering the agreement. The federal government’s position was that it owned the lands.

Since the company, as a land disposer, will not want to be the Garden City Lands caretaker longer than it has to, the property’s status will change in one way or another. The Garden City Lands Coalition is continuing to work to ensure that the property will remain green with ecological and food-security uses for community benefit. 

Citizens can help by finding ways to positively influence Canada Lands Company, the City of Richmond, the Musqueam Indian Band, the federal government, and the provincial government.

Public awareness is increasing that the company has a mandate to ensure optimal benefit for local communities in all its dealings and “enhance the quality of life in local communities” and that it proclaims values of transparency and corporate social responsibility.

Since there is a wide perception of a gap between the company’s professed values and actual conduct with the Garden City Lands, advocates of keeping the lands green for community benefit are increasingly calling for the company to act with and for the community.

A year ago, several Save-Garden-City presenters at the public hearing into the now-rejected ALR-exclusion application used a conceptual map as a visual aid. The map, with some discussion, remains available on the “Future” page of the Garden City Lands website. In this post, I’ll begin with the relevant excerpt and then, from this year-later perspective, add further reflection.

Many alternatives to high-density development have been proposed. At the Garden City Lands open houses [in February 2008], Garden City Lands Coalition members were available at all times to listen to the visitors’ ideas. The vast majority of visitors wanted to keep the Lands for purposes that can be permissible within the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Urban agricultural education was very popular, and a surprising number of people would be content to leave the lands the way they are. What the supportive visitors had in common was the desire to keep open green space.

Many of the open house visitors were concerned about retaining the food-growing capability for community uses. There was a general willingness to compromise on particular uses provided that the lands are kept in the ALR and not built up. The following illustration expresses the Richmond citizens’ vision. It’s all possible within the ALR.

The citizens’ vision map for the Garden City Lands is conceptual, and many of the features would ultimately be located in different places. For example, the main reservoir lake would be placed wherever the City engineers and agrologists choose, perhaps in the wide strip of non-bog fill along Alderbridge Way. Similarly, while some of the trails are in logical places, others are just where the artist happened to put them.

Reflecting a year later, I see particularly that sports fields need to be addressed in another way. The Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) has been rejecting cities’ attempts to use ALR lands for sports fields, and the artificial turf fields that are in vogue would be especially out of place. If the Garden City Lands become available as an agricultural and ecological park, then I think it’s important for citizens to ensure that the need for sports fields is being very well met—elsewhere. That could begin with upgrading of fields that are little used because of poor drainage, and it might include adding more artificial turf fields for reliable availability through our long rainy season.

My sense is that there is growing awareness of the value of keeping wetlands as bog and habitat, and there would probably be public support for retaining a wetlands area that is considerably larger than what the map labels as “natural habitat.” It would be in the parts where the sphagnum bog is deepest, largely to the east and the south. I don’t see the division as being a straight line drawn through the lands because that isn’t how nature chose to develop the bog and it wouldn’t be an attractive way to do things. Since the ditch along Westminster Highway actually drains the southeast corner too much, there might need to be reduced drainage in that corner, even though the west side needs better drainage, perhaps including the reservoir lake(s) that are needed for City Centre stormwater management.

I gather from Hon. Linda Reid, MLA for Richmond East, that constituents are very interested in a memorial garden, which she envisions as including a grove of maple trees. That would need to be in the northern part of the lands, where the ALC permitted up to 50,000 cubic metres of clean fill to be deposited years ago.

Of course, the property may not be available for these purposes. In that case, all of the Garden City Lands will probably remain as greenspace and wetlands, since Canada Lands Company, along with the Musqueam Indian Band, has said that the lands will not be farmed.