New Westminster trustees are joining the chorus of those asking Port Metro Vancouver for a comprehensive health impact assessment for the proposed $15-million Fraser Surrey Docks transfer coal facility, but they might not have to sign off on their letter.
Port Metro Vancouver is requiring more information about potential health risks, including an update on the air-quality assessment, the analysis of the coal composition and an assessment of the risk to human health, Port Metro Vancouver’s director of planning Jim Crandles told a daily newspaper.
The move will likely please local school trustees, who voted unanimously Tuesday to instruct staff to begin drafting a letter calling for more scrutiny.
One of the major concerns for board of education chair Jonina Campbell is the facility’s proximity to local schools.
“What’s frightening is when you look at where the tracks are, there’s about 100 schools … that will be close to where the trains would be going. And, in particular, we have our schools in Queensborough that would be just across the water from where the coal is going to end up,” Campbell said.
The district will be one of about five Lower Mainland school districts to voice concern about the facility. A number of municipalities and local residents have come out against the proposed coal facility, which they fear will impact air quality and contribute to global warming.
Trustee Casey Cook had a “smart” suggestion, Campbell said, to ask Port Metro Vancouver to make its report public.
“So that the report be completed and made public before Port Metro Vancouver makes its decision,” Campbell said.
Port Metro Vancouver is reviewing a permit application by Fraser Surrey Docks for the development of a facility to handle up to four million metric tones of coal at its Surrey facility. Though Fraser Surrey Docks submitted an environmental impact assessment in November 2013, Port Metro Vancouver has identified areas that “require further information, particularly around the assessment of the potential effects on human health,” thearticle states.
This is something that the many concerned citizens and schools districts, including New Westminster, were calling for.
“The assessment that was done previously didn’t look at the impacts on people,” Campbell said. “It really focused mostly on environmental impacts, and it also used data that was either old or data that didn’t take into consideration a larger geographical area. It just looked at right around the site that the coal was going to end up.”
