Step aside Great Bear Rainforest, the backcountry of the Purcell Mountains is the site of B.C.’s next big showdown over wilderness preservation. Up in our eastern frontier, the helicopters carry wealthy skiers rather than logs, and the small towns worry about growing too much rather than fading away.

There was a great hue and cry here at the legislature as the B.C. Liberals pushed through Bill 11, one of those innocuous-looking bits of legislative housekeeping that includes new resort municipality measures.

In lockstep, the NDP and Kootenay environmental group Wildsight protested that while the resort rules were a fine idea, one section would allow the B.C. cabinet to approve the Jumbo Glacier Resort, a project pursued for 15 years by a local ski resort developer. Both proceeded to campaign against the wrong section, which makes me wonder who’s running whom on the “no” side, the enviros or the politicians. Wildsight wants to save the planet not only from Jumbo resort, but also a coal mine in the Flathead Valley, coalbed methane in the Elk Valley, logging in mountain caribou areas, and even a resort on private land at Columbia Lake. Against Jumbo, it simultaneously argues that high glaciers shouldn’t be exploited for profit, and that declining skier numbers mean it won’t be profitable.

From a provincial perspective, it must be nice for Kootenay communities to be able to turn their noses up at even rigorously clean tourist development. The Cariboo-Chilcotin, North Coast, North Island and Skeena aren’t so lucky.

Wildsight and Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald insist the public is against the Jumbo resort. East Kootenay MLA Bill Bennett says fewer than two per cent of area residents registered objections with the province’s Environment Assessment Office, but Macdonald insists the public has spoken.

“It’s not an NDP-Liberal thing,” Macdonald told me. “It’s an Invermere and outsider thing.” He noted that former premiers Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark supported Jumbo resort too.

Nelson-Creston MLA Corky Evans is less delicate. In debate last week he called Jumbo “this big vacuum cleaner that sucks so that everybody from Calgary drives over on a Saturday to visit their condo, on top of a glacier.”

What the new legislation actually does is permit a municipality to extend its boundaries to take in a resort such as Jumbo, and be designated as a resort region. According to Bennett, both Invermere and Radium Hot Springs are in a position to do this. Both municipalities are represented on the regional district board, which is presumed to oppose Jumbo, but either would be expected to jump at having the resort included in its own tax base.

Oddly, the mayors of both communities spoke highly of the new resort legislation, before Wildsight launched its media campaign against Jumbo. Macdonald says his e-mails are running four to one against, which is not surprising since it’s the result of a strenuous press and Internet push by Wildsight. Among Wildsight’s arguments is that skiing on the glacier will make it melt faster. Bennett notes that some of those dastardly Calgary oil barons have been helicopter skiing on the glacier for some time.

Source: www.saobserver.net

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Resort. Tags: AIG Calgary Columbia Condo development environmental group Hot Springs Nelson Resort resort developer Revelstoke . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.