This is a long read, and has been written from memory, so some details may be absent, but I believe the timeline and chronicle of events to be accurate to my recollection. This process has been ongoing for over two years, and today's conclusion is no more trustworthy than the assertion about seismic risk in the first place. The seismic peril and potential loss of 150 lives came with all the authority that a PEng signature brings. That report has proven to have been completely faulty. We are now asked to believe a second report carrying P.Eng. authority. However, the common problem hindering public acceptance of these conclusions is the complete lack of public scrutiny of the process that has yielded these results. "Trust us we are Engineers or we are the professional City Staff " just doesn't cut it any more.
Jim Taylor
Public Scrutiny Has
Been Absent From Colliery Dams Process
Back in the
fall of 2012, city council were told (behind closed doors) of the perils and
costs of dealing with the Colliery Dams. It was a no-brainer as the cost to
remediate these ‘recreational dams’ was astronomical and councillors were
warned of liability should the dams fail with resulting loss of life.
This entire
process was void of any public scrutiny or oversight. It is unknown to this
day, what information was supplied to council or what liability warnings were
issued at that stage, nor how many councillors supported the dam removals.
At this
point it is clear, that city staff were of the opinion the dams should be
removed and the area ‘re-naturalized’, for whatever reason is unimportant. The
point is that staff had made a decision and was prepared to support that
opinion and gain council and public support the best way possible. Public
safety is a hard motive to argue against and when combined with the massive $30
million cost of an alternate solution the first tactic used to gain public
support for the removal option was put in play.
The first
foray into the public arena was at the old fire hall in Harewood, where city
officials set up the usual storyboards with all the ‘pretty pictures’ as Loyd
Sherry would say, in an oft repeated ‘public open house’ format wherein the
city explains to the citizens what they are doing under the guise of seeking
input.
It turns out
that the citizens in Harewood were not really buying into the whole story as
presented and the realization that city hall was putting into motion a plan to
destroy Colliery Dams Park was met with fierce opposition. A public meeting
held in Barsby School saw several hundreds of angered residents present voicing
their unbelief at what city hall was proposing. Out of this gathering was the
genesis of the Colliery Dam Park Preservation Society who admittedly until this
point paid little attention to what went on at city hall.
It is likely
at this point city hall staff and council were caught off-guard as to the
organized response to their proposal. People with various backgrounds in
construction were drawn to the issue, some attracted by the unbelievable costs
the city were claiming associated with the dams and others incredulous at the
safety claims being promoted by the city.
The CDPPS
group made a thoughtful, fact based presentation to city council, led by
Engineer Mr. Lorne Gale who made it very clear to all, that there was much room
for improvement in what the city was proposing. Rather than receiving this help
and considering what he had to say, his credentials were belittled by a few
councillors and a challenge to his facts was thrown out. Opposing councillors
who challenged his figures, seemed unable to realize he was merely interpreting
information contained in the engineers reports from the city, it was not new
information of his own he was presenting.
It was at
this point that city council and city hall did what they do quite often and
that is ‘circle the wagons’ and resist any notion that our city hall staff
could be in error. That is simply something city hall seems unable to ever
consider.
It was at
this point we were being told remediation could cost as much as $30 million,
remember? What was being presented by people familiar with real construction costs
was the fact that the problem could be dealt with for far less than what city
hall was saying. At this point, there was no challenge to the real need to do
anything as everyone seemed to be accepting the fact the old, crumbling dams
could fail any minute and dealing with that as reality was where we started
from.
With the
revelation (brought from Mr. Gale) that the cost for a fix could be much less
than $30 million, city council put the brakes on, ‘kind of’, which resulted in
a whole new review of the entire matter.
At this
point city staff engaged the engineering firm to provide more information to
support the claim the dams presented grave peril to the public and could not be
ignored for another 100 years. This is when the ‘facts’ about massive,
catastrophic dam failure with the resulting loss of 150 lives was given the P.Eng.
Stamp of approval by the professional’s city hall had hired to prove their
opinion the dams had to be removed.
When it was
obvious they were going to be faced with public opposition, the city proceeded
with the incredible step of spending $35,000+ on a pre-emptive court injunction
against John and Jane Doe (anyone) to keep them from interfering with the
destruction of the dams. They were
unsuccessful but demonstrated the length to which they would go to remove the
dams.
The actual
timeline and details are a little fuzzy (I am doing this from memory) but at
one point after the intervention of a facilitator and considerable more expense
rather than proceeding with dam removal the idea they would remove the dams and
then replace them was embraced by council. I believe this was Councillor
Brennan’s idea of compromise. It would solve the immediate safety issue the
dams proposed and satisfy the desire to retain the ponds in the park by
rebuilding the dams the following year. Anyone paying attention could see this
as likely just a ploy as the possibility of a permit being issued to rebuild
was highly unlikely. In other words, once the dams were gone, they were gone.
The impact the resulting siltation would have downstream was never adequately
dealt with as several other environmental concerns which were raised.
City hall
was at the point of awarding the contract to remove the dams when then-Chief
Douglas White appeared before council and pressed for a cooling off and sober
second look at the entire issue. That is how close city hall came to achieving
their goal of removing the dams, come hell or high water. Pun intended.
After
installing a large number of warning signs, warning siren and having uniformed
officers go through the neighbourhood to make sure residents were sure of the
possible danger, the Dam Safety Section agreed with what the city was now
proposing.
The
‘technical committee’ was then struck led by city staff and attended by
representatives of SFN and the CDPPS. They selected Golder Associates as
consultants on the project. By design there was no city council member on the
committee, nor was there any public or media scrutiny of the process. Members of
the committee also seem to have been governed by in-camera rules as details of
the process were not open to the public. This is a similar MO of far too many
city hall decisions and is the common denominator between the
seismically-caused hazard and the now flood-caused hazard we are presented
with.
This
committee undertook proper examination of the ‘facts’ of the dams Vis a Vis how
they would respond to a seismic event. This determined the dams would not
catastrophically fail in three minutes with the resulting loss of 150 lives as
the previous engineers reports claimed. When facts, rather than assumption were
applied to the condition of the dam, it was concluded the peril was simply a
faulty opinion.
Here we are
again, after this latest $1,000,000+ exercise by a city staff led process, with
the opinion being expressed something has to be done to mitigate the peril an
overtopping event would cause in a significant flood.
The problem
with this latest conclusion is similar to the problem with the first conclusion
in that it is made in the absence of properly investigated facts and based on
much assumption.
While we are
being told the engineers have concluded a flood would cause the dams to overtop
due to inadequate spillway capacity, it has never happened in over 100 years. I
understand there is only 25 years of reliable data upon which the conclusion was
made regards this overtopping event.
While the
engineers claim inadequate spillway capacity, they are not providing the
complete methodology and data they used when arriving at that conclusion. There
is credible challenge to this assertion and some feel the spillway capacity is
grossly understated.
Based on the
assumption the spillway could not handle the flow of water in this assumed rain
event, it is further assumed that the water overtopping the dam would cause all
of the rock and fill on the downstream side of the dam to be washed away. It is
further assumed that with this fill removed; the concrete core dam wall would
fail, releasing the water currently sitting in these two settling ponds in
Colliery Dams Park.
There are a
lot of conclusions based on a lot of assumptions which are not supported by any
fact-based study as to whether this concrete core dam would actually fail even
if all of the fill were to be washed away. This is just one more huge
assumption coming with the authority of a P.Eng stamp affixed.
The Common Denominator and Flaw in the
Process
As a
resident of the city of Nanaimo, I have no reason to believe that the
conclusion of this second city-led process is any more valid than the first.
There was no council oversight, no media or public oversight and in the end has
produced an opinion that in my opinion is still lacking proper investigation
into how this dam will perform in an overtopping event. The conclusion it will
fail, seems based on the same assumptions that led the previous engineers to
assume a catastrophic, three minute failure with the loss of 150 lives.
The pubic
who is being asked to support an $8 million (estimate) expenditure to remediate
this assumed risk have no reason to believe this conclusion is anymore valid
than the first P.Eng supported claim.
If this city
council were to direct an open and transparent sober second look at this
process, which must include study to support the hypothesis that this dam will
actually fail, it might come as no surprise that this second conclusion is
simply as faulty as the first, and that we may in fact have to do very little,
if anything at all.
This cannot
be another ‘behind closed doors’ exercise led by city staff who have been
driving this process from the beginning.
Excellent summary of events
ReplyDelete