Councilor George Anderson

Anderson Unable To Understand Dam Alternative?

At the last meeting of city council, an engineer associated with a group wanting to save the Colliery Park Lake Dams made a presentation to city council which clearly demonstrated a viable alternative to removing the dams.

Not only would this alternative preserve the lakes, it would also save Nanaimo taxpayers $4,000,000.00 in costs. The information the engineer presented was based on the data already contained in the seismic assessment report which the city had commissioned in 2009. In that report the engineer hired by the city put an estimate of $1,000,000.00 to rehabilitate the dams which would insure public safety in the event of a seismic event. The engineer associated with the Colliery group increased that estimate to $3,000,000 which would also address the increased spillway capacity called for in a recent inundation report.

Councilor Anderson seemed to not notice that members of city staff raised no questions about this alternate nor did they challenge the presentation. It would have been very difficult since the information presented is already contained in the reports they have had since 2010.

It appeared as if Councilor Anderson simply did not understand the concept that was placed before council, as the only questions he was able to muster was to challenge the credentials of the engineer making the presentation. The only thing accomplished was to make it obvious he had not done any 'homework' which should have included reading the transcript of the meeting between city staff and the Colliery group on Dec. 6. The minutes of that meeting make it abundantly clear that this engineer knows what he is talking about, and his credibility was never challenged by city staff or the engineer who had authored the original report in 2010.

Clearly it would seem that the youngest member of council has little understanding of this whole matter, which makes it less than comforting knowing his vote has as much weight as councilor's who do understand the issue.