You Decide - Is Staff Defying City Council?

Clearly city staff is defying this city council, and clearly this city council is just rolling over, as can be expected. The motion that was passed by council on July 8 appears in italics. The following is a letter from Mr. Hickey to Ms. Gordon who was the facilitator for this exercise.

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“Whereas, Council has received new information that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have confirmed the requirement to perform “works” at the Colliery Dams can be performed outside the July 15 – September 15th timeframes, and;

Whereas, The Province has not ordered that the Colliery Dams be removed by a deadline of September 15th, and;

Whereas, in an effort to show Council’s complete and total respect of the Snuneymuxw First Nations, who have asked for further consultation surrounding the technical aspects and recognition of their Douglas Treaty rights;

Therefore, be it resolved that the City of Nanaimo will seek to conduct further discussions, over a 30 day period ending 2013-AUG-08, with the Snuneymuxw First Nations, exhausting all possible options and considerations before awarding a contract for the removal of the Colliery Dams.”

Now, how does this motion reconcile with this letter from Mr. Hickey to Ms Gordon?

From: Tom Hickey [mailto:Tom.Hickey@nanaimo.ca]
Sent: July-17-13 4:25 PM
To: 'Katherine Gordon'; Al KenningCc: Mayor John Ruttan; Marilyn Smith
Subject: RE: Colliery dams: exhausting all options

Katherine,

As an update to your email below, the KCB letter regarding the pumping system assessment as a method to mitigate the risk was circulated today. Also, the assessment of the critical timelines for the removal of the Middle Dam only is being done by Milner Group Ventures Inc.

As far as your question regarding any work being done to revisit and re-assess and/or confirm the existing information on other options, such as remediation or removal/renaturalization, and what is the status of such work?

There is no work being done to revisit, re-assess or confirm the information on other options. The City has been working with Klohn Crippen Berger (KCB) Engineering since last December on the design for removal and on conceptual level cost estimates of 7 remediation, removal and rebuild options. This work was undertaken to provide the basis for comparison of the options on a consistent cost, feasibility and safety basis. A peer review engineer Hatch Ltd. was retained to: hear input from the CDPS, consider the viability of suggested options, recommend options for costing, and finally to review the costs submitted by KCB.

During the process the Colliery Dams Preservation Society (CDPS) presented a variety of ideas to Hatch. Hatch and KCB agreed on the seven most viable alternatives for costing. Staff added the removal option in the analysis for comparative purposes.

Both KCB and HATCH are highly regarded engineering firms with extensive dam experience. Their work on the conceptual level cost estimates took 3 months to develop and provides excellent information.

In their peer review of the costs, Hatch has indicated that they are in agreement with the options for rehabilitation and replacement and are in agreement with the technical evaluations and costs developed.

These reports are available to you and were provided to SFN when they were received by the City a few months ago. The City has invested over $600,000 in getting expert analysis of the options available to us to mitigate the risks.

Thanks,

Tom