Save Our Southlands

Why should the Southlands be preserved as agricultural land?

Because it is good farmland. Numerous scientific reports affirm the good quality of the land and the Agricultural Land Commission judged the land worthy of inclusion in the Land Reserve. The Southlands also has a rich farming history, with many cash crops grown in addition to a large dairy operation that ran for decades.

The David Suzuki Foundation report "Forever Farmland" explains that "the best, most productive agricultural lands have intrinsic values that should be protected into perpetuity - once developed they can never be adequately recovered or restored."

The Southlands are such lands.

As recent events have shown, a domestic agricultural landbase is an important asset. If we rely on food to come to us from other areas of the continent and the world, we will end up with an economy where fresh produce is tied to the price of oil. While we are presently living in a time where all the world's wares come to us in our supermarkets, there is no reason to think this is sustainable in the long term. (BC's food self-reliance stats available here).

And for all the fancy packaging on the Southlands proposal, one fact cannot be avoided: there is no environmental or smart growth principle that includes putting housing on productive farmland.

Aren't you living in the past? All that fuss over the Southlands took place ages ago.

The issues raised all those years ago are even more pertinent today. Farmland is still being lost to development at a rapid pace.

We are about to lose more prime farmland in Delta than at any time in the last thirty years, this in addition to all the losses throughout the Lower Mainland.

It is also reasonable to expect that the same pressure we see on farmland here in BC is happening elsewhere. Throughout Washington, Oregon and California, agricultural land is being taken out of production for housing. At some point, we have to say enough is enough.

Another issue brought up at the public hearings was traffic. Since 1989 it is safe to say that the town of Tsawwassen is much more congested than it ever has been. With 2,000 new residences planned for the Southlands, in addition to increased ferry traffic, increased truck traffic from the port, the increase in traffic from the new golf course development plus any new housing on treaty lands, traffic volume is going to go way up. Most of those traffic sources are outside our control. However, it is in our power to stop Southlands development.

Century Holdings has already admitted that it can do little to help with the type of traffic that South Delta citizens have to deal with every day, saying the highways are out of its control.

True, but development is within its control, and they should realize that large scale development so far from urban centers is sprawl no matter how you dress it up.

What's all this talk about putting the land back in the Agricultural Land Reserve?

While the chance that the Southlands will be re-included in the Agricultural Land Reserve in the near future is admittedly slim, it is certainly not outside the realm of the possible. It is fully within the rights of a municipal government to submit land for ALR inclusion, even land that the municipality does not own. The process is outlined in the Agricultural Land Commission Act of 2002 and further detailed on the ALR website.

While the political will might not exist in the present to make such an application, local government might listen if the voters were seen to endorse such a course of action.

If, at the end of this proccess, rezoning is denied to Century Group, I think it would be a reasonable step to put the land back in the reserve. Development proposals in 1971, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1983, 1989 and 1992 have all met with failure. I think it is unfair for the people of this town to have to fight this thing every ten, fifteen, twenty years.

If the development fails, let's try to reach a conclusion that has some permanence to it.

Dave Staniforth

Click here to sign an online petition requesting inclusion of the Southlands in the ALR.