Judy Morrison Pt Holmes Foreshore Article June 20

Point Holmes shoreline needs environmental protection
- not “one size fits all” approach
- A special timeline and report from area resident Judy Morrison
Timeline:
1967 – Community of Point Holmes Stewardship
A pedestrian walkway was built atop the Dunes and some areas on the water side of the
Dune ‘hardened’; parking atop the Dunes (which was standard practice) was dissuaded
when the Community, with permission from the Department of Transportation, put in large
rocks along Lazo Road to prevent vehicular access to the Dunes; signage (wording as
follows ‘Sand Dune Ecosystem Fragile Vegetation No Vehicles) was placed at two spots on
the Road.
2006 – Comox annexes portions of Lazo road including the subject shoreline.
2011 - June, a letter by Judy Morrison to Town of Comox:
“I am very pleased that Council has recognized a need for a strategy with regards to the
coastal sand dunes area and would like to emphasize that the time line on the issue be as
short as possible. I define the ‘Coastal Dunes Area’ as the area on the water side of Lazo
Road between Hutton and Knight Roads; I call it the best view in the Valley. That portion of
road is the reason for the high volume of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian in the area.
That is the piece of road for which a runner will run 10k for a one kilometer spectacular view.
I believe that the Implementation Strategy should continue that stewardship and work
together with the Point Holmes residents in maintaining this little ‘piece of paradise’ so that it
can be enjoyed in posterity by the people of Comox. Suggestions to include in the
Implementation Strategy would be (and I have them listed in what I believe is order of
priority):
1. Clear the existing Dune trail of invasive vegetation (mostly broom) and harden the existing
trail surface to accommodate pedestrian traffic. The trail is almost contiguous from the
parking area at the North end of the Hutton Road areas to the Boat Launch and is a perfect
solution for separating pedestrian use from vehicular use.
2. Limit use of the trail to pedestrians only (not bicycles and horses).
3. Have signage at many spots along the Dunes explaining that it is illegal to remove rocks
and wood from the Marine Foreshore. Each year the Residents of Lazo watch as that
vulnerable foreshore is hauled away, speeding up the erosion of the Dunes and Lazo Road
and disturbing the eco-system of the foreshore.
3. Have signage available to explain the unique geological features of the dunes. I believe
the Dunes could be a destination for school groups or other interested hiking groups.
4. Create access points with steps or some hardened surface from Lazo Road to the beach
and limit access in the remaining areas of the Dunes.
5. Lower the speed limit on Lazo Road to 30 kph [40 kph possibly] as has been done on the
road at the Spit. The lower speed would accommodate safer interaction of bicycles with
motorized vehicles.
Any or all of the above could be a very strong intermediate solution for most of the usage and
the inherent problems associated with the Dunes, but they could be the long term solution also.
“All of these points have been addressed with the Parks Department but without some clear
mandate from the Town it is not being done. And now I see that there is going to be an
Implementation Strategy Policy to deal with the dune.
“I don’t think it takes ‘rocket science’ to step in and do some preventative work in the Dune area.
My experience with policies and committees is not favourable; the worst scenario would be a
lengthy enough period of time to the point where we are talking repairs instead of prevention
and that should be avoided. There is already one area of Lazo where erosion is occurring due
to uncontrolled access in front of 522 Lazo Road.” [and the lack of prevention has carried on
to for five more years to 2016.]
2011 – 2016
Total clearing of all broom from 506 Lazo Road north to Knight Road by private citizens.
2011 – Release of ‘Lazo Road Shoreline Protection and Restoration Report'
2015 - Construction of two pedestrian accesses to beach by private citizens.
2015 – Town of Comox Application to Federal Government for Funding of Project
Federal Government denied funding.
2016 - Town of Comox Application to Provincial Government for Funding of Project
Provincial government approved the application
May 7, 2016 – Town of Comox Open House
Citizens of the Community are shown what is being done and are told that the project is out
to Tender.
May 2016 - Letter(s) to the Editor by Judy Morrison
June 8, 2016 – Application by Judy Morrison to be a delgation at Council - to present alternate
solutions to the project.
June 10, 2016 – Denial of delegation
The reason given was that it was too late. Her point...considering the project only came out
for Public Viewing on May 7, she thought she was quite timely in her preparation and
application.
June 16 - Application by Judy Morrison to be a delegation at Council. She wanted to speak on
her civil rights as a tax paying resident of the Town of Comox, and right to be a delegation and
present her report to Council
June 17 – Denial of delegation. Denied on the basis that “the issue is not considered to fall
within the jurisdiction of Council.”
Judy Morrison believes that the Town of Comox solution for the Lazo Road Shoreline, as
presented to the Community at the Open House on May 7, shows a cavalier treatment giving
little or no respect to the intelligence of the community for input at a Public Hearing.
“Under the guise of a Road Improvement which, under the Municipal Government Act does not
require a public hearing, the complete area of the Shoreline is being ‘engineered’ with no
Community involvement. It’s not appropriate that the Town commission a report, create a
proposal and set of drawings to accompany same, apply for funding and then, once funding is
established and the job put out to Tender, offer an Open House and tell the citizens of the Town
of Comox what is being done,” she states.
There was no room for Community involvement or opinion in the process.
Secondly, this project talks about restoration of the shoreline, along approximately 640 metres
of Lazo Road, but there is no RESTORATION; the Town uses the term incorrectly. Restoration
is not (and I quote the from the Town report), “...regrading the existing bank and stripping the
existing topsoil and vegetation......[replacing with a slope]... This slope will be developed through
placement of 1.2m average diameter rip rap.”
The Town’s solution means that the residents of the Comox Valley, as they walk along this
stretch of beach, are now going to see 640 metres of rip rap and pit run i.e. rocks varying in
width up to 1.2 metres in diameter, instead of limited green growth. As the gentleman beside
herat the Open House put it succinctly - “UGLY!”
Lazo Road is an ideal opportunity for the Town of Comox to create a superb example of how to
‘restore’ a beach but instead the Town Report dismisses soft restoration only as a nonalternative: “...the Town’s preference is for a lower maintenance approach (such as rip rap)
versus, for example, a biological (soft) engineering approach that requires a higher degree of
routine maintenance.” Nowhere does it mention that the soft approach would cost considerably
less than the hard approach. The surplus money would pay for a lot of maintenance and the
residents of the Comox Valley would have a ‘Green Shore’ to look at.
Yes, the Lazo Road beach needs substantial restoration and shore line protection to correct and
prevent same but the ‘one solution fits all’ does not apply in this area. The Report breaks the
area into three segments; the most northerly one has moderate erosion, the middle section
which includes the dune and a couple of ‘oases’ and is almost half of the project, has little to no
erosion and the south portion has heavy erosion. Why is a major rip rap wall including the
stripping of existing vegetation, being put along the entire extent of the beach, even in the area
where there is little to no erosion?
Soft solutions to the erosion, using woody debris, smaller rocks, some large ones and soil could
be utilized instead, leaving a more natural appearance. Victoria and Lantzville have already
used Green Shore or soft treatments in some of their beach areas. For a closer example of soft
treatment, the Kitty Coleman Beach Provincial Park campground is available. Driftwood logs at
the surface have been anchored to buried logs or rocks and smaller rocks were interspersed
among the surface logs. Today the treatment is softened even more by vegetation, which has
grown naturally in the intervening spaces.
The Town Engineers state that rip rap or a hard treatment is a solution to circumvent cost. If the
design were to eliminate several tons of rip rap, change a walkway from 3.0m to 1.5m, and
create one less pedestrian access, the considerable savings would be ample for any future
maintenance. Another argument that the Town uses for the rip rap solution is the severity of the
storms on the Lazo Coast. The existing sand dune, composed completely of sand with a layer
of vegetation that has withstood storms for decades, would appear to repudiate that argument!
Much of the ‘root of all evil’ in this shoreline demolishment stems from the 3.0m walkway that
has been delineated in the Town of Comox OCP. A line on a piece of paper in the OCP
requiring a 3.0m walkway can be a much different proposition when it comes to siting that same
walkway on an actual piece of geography.
There is no room on the Lazo Road shoreline for a 3.0m walkway without engineering, i.e.
building out every portion. Measurements along the extent of the proposal, taken in June of
2016, show that there is adequate or surplus room to accommodate a shared (bicycles, cars
pedestrians) roadway system, using the requirements delineated in the Town of Comox
Transportation Study of 3.3m pavement width, 1.5m sidewalk and one side parking. Only on
one 30 metre stretch of roadway is the walkway minimum width of 1.5 metres compromised
(varies from .8m to 1.3m)
At the last Council meeting it was stated that the OCP is a fluid document that can be changed
to accommodate existing needs. As suggested by Comox Valley Land Trust, “The dunes along
Lazo Road are remnants of a larger "Sparsely Vegetated" sensitive ecosystem. They are
underrepresented in the Valley and require protection. Replacing the dunes with a 3m paved
walkway does not meet this expectation. There are other options - such as widening both
shoulders, giving bikes right-of-way (as on Beaufort Avenue) and/or minor improvements to the
pedestrian trail on the dune (for pedestrians). Clearly defining pedestrian beach accesses, as
well as a combination of signage and perhaps defined trail heads, would greatly reduce the
amount of erosion caused by human interaction with the beach.”
The dunes along Lazo Road and the vegetation must/should be preserved as part of a Garry
Oak eco-system. Just on the west side of Lazo road are Krummholz Garry Oaks, those lovely,
gnarly, stunted trees shaped by continuous exposure to fierce winds; trees that we all enjoy
looking at. They have survived the weather on this coast for hundreds of years. Are we going
to compromise their environment just because we can?
To that end, Judy has included three photos.
The first photo shows the dunes as they exist with that view that Valley residents cherish. The
photo shows you ‘green/vegetation’ and she recommends that if you enjoy that view, go quickly
and look one more time. Given the Town plans, vegetation will soon be a thing of memory and
instead you will be looking at a slope of which fully 95% will be engineered (a slander to the
profession, Judy adds) with rip rap up to 1.2m in diameter, pit run.....yes, a rock wall. Beach
Grasses will be gone, Douglas Hawthorns will be gone, Nootka Rose will be gone...and so on.
The second photograph shows the erosion at the south end of the project. It is the one of the
key photographs featured in any presentation by the Town to the public as a scare technique.
In reality the erosion is approximately six feet high and exists only in a few spots along the
southerly 240m.
The third photograph shows the largest of the sand dunes along Lazo Road. It has no storm
erosion and only limited erosion from pedestrian access. It is slated to get the same engineered
slope as the area in Photo 2. That treatment is the best example of one solution does not fit all.
The area of the dune is the middle 300m of the subject lands, all of which shows limited erosion.
“I suppose that I am naive. I believe that education is the key to working with the Environment.
I know that humans have done a poor job in that past but hopefully, taking what we know, we
can try and do better now and in the future. In my naivete I believed that Comox Town Council
had only been shown by their administration the 3.0m walkway and engineered shoreline
solutions and that they would listen to a rational person with an alternate working solution but I
was wrong....about the ‘listen to',” Judy states.
“My application to ‘Present to Council’ was given to the Town administration staff in a timely
manner and all the blanks were filled in and the document was dutifully signed by me. There
were no fees so I didn’t miss paying those. Why was I denied? Even if I am a raving lunatic or
a kook there is a 10 minute time limit on my presentation and surely Council could be polite
enough to extend that time to a Comox resident. I was not given that respect and I resent that.
“What have I learned in the knowledge of this project and the attempts to present to Council. I
have discovered that Political Lobbying (in my vocabulary that is right up there with political
graft) is a necessary evil. I thought administration would listen to sensible (as presented to them
by Comox Valley Land Trust and some other individuals) and possibly work the information into
their solutions but that was wrong.
“What else did I learn and still am learning. Citizens of the Valley, I am very pleased to
announce that I have been talked to and e-mailed to and phoned by a lot of good people.
Thank you for that.”
“And so...construction is about to start on the Lazo Shore project this Monday, June 20. It is not
too late. Please, as individuals and groups, contact all levels of government expressing dismay
at the treatment of one of ‘the remnants of a larger "Sparsely Vegetated sensitive ecosystem" ...
[that is]....underrepresented in the Valley and requires protection.
In conclusion, one more time, Judy would like to quote J.T. Titus, Maryland when he said, “In
the next century, the majority of America’s shorelines could be replaced by a wall – not because
anyone decided that this should happen, but because no one decided that it should not.”
“I would like to be on the list of those people who say it should not,” she says in conclusion.
END