(Editor's note: The City of Port Alberni posted the partnering agreements with Matthews West Developments at https://www.letsconnectpa.ca/somass-lands after this letter went to press in our print edition. The letter writers asked that their submission be updated online with the new information.)
To the Editor,
We were excited to learn from city staff recently that a long-awaited announcement was coming on the Somass Lands partnership with Matthews West Developments but remain frustrated by the obvious lack of transparency appropriate for a civic project of this scope.
The city’s April 8 news release reads more like a carefully crafted corporate statement, full of puffery yet conspicuously short on detail.
“This is a transformational step for the City of Port Alberni,” the mayor said upon signing the master development agreement. “We purchased the land in 2021 and have been working toward this day ever since.”
We learned that Port Alberni is “set to reclaim its waterfront” while signing away 80 percent of public ownership. We learned, two years in, that the city remains in early stages with no assurance that Matthews West will purchase the property. Then there was this ambiguous statement: “With a signed agreement in hand, the City will begin sharing investigative studies from remediation and site preparation work completed to date.”
Sharing with the developer but not the public?
Inking the master agreement appears to push the project into the next realm without addressing key planning concerns — site contamination, flood prevention and drainage for a start.
We are left to fill in the blanks. When will the master development agreements be shared with the public? How can there be a master development agreement without a master development plan to implement the official community plan for the site? How could the developer sign this agreement without knowing the extent of bioremediation required?
How will developers indemnify Port Alberni taxpayers from possible post-construction losses due to flooding or tsunami inundation?
Again, the city seems to have reduced a promising vision to a confidential transactional arrangement without public accountability. This is not just any old mill site but one that occupies the estuary of the Somass River, one of B.C.’s most productive salmon watersheds, the same flood-prone estuary inundated by the 1964 tsunami and where, 60 years later, sea level rise due to climate warming is a scientific certainty.
If Port Alberni is to be truly transformed by Somass redevelopment then the public ought to be aware of the transaction. When will the secret master development agreement be released to the public?
Alberni Valley Transition Town presented a long list of questions to the city that were raised through a public forum and workshop late last year. The answers it received — late — from the city were not particularly enlightening. They are posted on our website, avtransitiontown.org.
Mike Youds,
AV Transition Town Society,
and Chris Alemany,
Dry Creek Restoration Group
