Developers of the controversial Jumbo Glacier Resort (JGR) in the Kootenays must get a new environmental assessment certificate in order to continue developing the ski resort that has been in the planning and development stages for decades.
B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak announced June 18 that she does not believe that the project has been “substantially started.”
The wording is important because that’s the necessary threshold for the resort to be able to continue its development under its environmental certificate. Without meeting the threshold for work at the resort, the developers will have to start the process again of getting an environmental assessment certificate in order to do any more work at the site.
The province approved the project in March 2012 .
Glacier Resorts Ltd. senior vice-president Grant Costello had sounded very confident that his company had met the threshold of having “substantially started” work on the resort.
“We think that the odds are in our favour because we did do substantial work so it’s hard to understand how they could rule otherwise,” Costello told Business in Vancouver in March .
He said at the time that his company last year poured foundations for a day lodge, utility building and ski lift.
When BIV contacted Costello following Polak’s announcement, he sounded dumbstruck.
“It’s news to me,” he said.
When asked what this means for the project, he said, “I really don’t know. I’ll have to look at the announcement and talk to our team.”
Polak said that she based her assessment on:
•submissions from Glacier Resorts Ltd. and area First Nations representatives such as the Ktunaxa Nation Council and the Shuswap Indian Band;
•guidance from the court decision in Taku River Tlingit First Nation versus B.C. case;
•the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office's substantially started determination report; and
•her own observations from a visit to the Jumbo Glacier Resort project
site on Oct. 11, 2014.
"In making my decision, I focused on the physical activities that had taken place at the project site," Polak said in a conference call. "While it is clear that some construction has started, I was not convinced that the physical activity undertaken as of October 12, 2014, meets the threshold of a substantially started project."
The Jumbo proposal is for a year-round ski resort development in the Jumbo Creek valley, which is 55 kilometres west of Invermere. The B.C. government issued an environmental assessment certificate for the project on Oct. 12, 2004. As a result of an extension issued in 2009, the expiry date of the certificate was Oct. 12, 2014.
Polak told BIV that the developers are eligible to reapply for an environmental assessment certificate and that the documents and reports that they used to get the original certificate 10 years ago would have to be updated. Once the developers apply for the certificate, her expectation is that the Environmental Assessment Office make a decision on granting a new certificate within 180 days.
"In the determination we've made, their certificate expires, "Polak said. "It no longer exists and they would have to begin right from the start but it wouldn't be that the same project would be reconsidered, they would have to start from scratch," she said.
