The Surrey Leader reports today, “Premier Christy Clark visited a North Vancouver bulk shipping terminal Monday to announce $700 million in new highway upgrades to develop B.C.’s Pacific Gateway program. The announcement didn’t include details of new highway upgrades, beyond current projects such as the Port Mann-Highway 1 expansion and the South Fraser Perimeter Road, a truck route to port facilities in South Delta. …The B.C. government’s February budget says the province’s total contribution to the South Fraser Perimeter Road will be $1.06 billion when it is complete in the summer of 2014.” (It has also been reported that the highway will be completed by the end of 2013.)
CBC adds, “(Today) Clark released details of $25 billion public and private sector plan to expand trade with Asia by improving the province’s transportation network. Clark said that the spending is needed to increase trucking capacity on highways, rail capacity along existing rail corridors, air cargo movement, and both bulk and container terminal capacity at marine ports in Vancouver and Prince Rupert. …The largest chunk of spending is targeted to the natural gas industry, with $18 billion planned to go towards private sector pipeline and plant investment.” In the Fall of 2011, the provincial government announced a $50 million commitment to Deltaport terminal projects.
Last April, Surrey Now reported, “Opponents of the $2-billion project, a 40-kilometre four-lane highway stretching from Deltaport Way to the Golden Ears Bridge, say it will pollute the environment, pave farmland, increase greenhouse gas emissions and scar the banks of the Fraser River.”
Recently, the Cloverdale Reporter noted, “Defenders of Burns Bog will have to wait until this summer to find out if their court challenge fighting the South Fraser Perimeter Road will succeed. The lawsuit filed by the Burns Bog Conservation Society against the federal government was to be heard this month has been put off to July 12. The society wants the court to hit Ottawa with hefty fines, uphold the conservation covenant that protects Burns Bog and force the route of the $1.4-billion truck freeway to be relocated further away from the bog and its sensitive hydrology. …(Conservation society president Eliza) Olson said she’s pleased the federal court judge agreed the lawsuit is not frivolous and raises serious issues that must be heard. Delta council had previously received legal advice that the covenant could not be used to block the perimeter road or other development beyond the bog footprint on which it applies.”
In opposition to the highway, Council of Canadians chapters unfurled a massive ‘climate action now’ banner in April 2010, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=3001; held a ‘dig in’ protest in October 2010, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=4238; had a protest with two-hundred sand bags to block the front doors of a building where then-premier Gordon Campbell was believed to be meeting in December 2010, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=4926; organized a mass direct action/ two-week long occupation of the highway construction site beginning in April 2011, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=6598; and much more.
