Deltaport, before Gateway

And I am hoping there are no "After Gateway" photos in our future.

Bracketing the main part of the Tsawwassen First Nations Reserve, two causeways stretch out several kilometres into the Strait of Georgia. They function, although that was not the intent of the builders, as breakwaters, creating a calm bay where assorted waterbirds rest and feed.


This was taken from the Deltaport causeway, looking south towards the ferry landing and the San Juan islands in the distance. Maybe a map will help.




Looking northwest; the water is a bit rougher. The Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary is on that spit of flat land. Beyond, the North Shore mountains and the Sunshine Coast.


Looking inland, to the southeast; the Tsawwassen Reserve is directly ahead. It's midafternoon, on a bright day; most of the ducks are probably dabbling in the shade along the waterways at Reifel. But there are still a few out in the open, dotted here and there across the bay.

More ducks, of assorted varieties.

On the Deltaport causeway itself, the scene changes.


Three wide lanes of train tracks, with a highway for trucks alongside. Gravel, rust, metal, oil. Assorted chunks of rusted iron. A smell of diesel and dust.

There's a certain romance about trains, something that sings of distance and strength, that recalls lonely whistles in the night, that chants a clackety-clack-clack poem made of names of places: "Kicking Horse Pass and Cranbrook and Golden, Crowsnest, Kelowna, Lethbridge and Skagway, North to the Yukon, South to Vancouver, the Canyon and Whistler, Day-train to Squamish."

Canada's history is interlaced with tales of the railway; it's what opened up the west and tied the country together. Who has not seen the photos of the Last Spike, or heard of the blood, sweat and dynamite that carved the route through the Fraser Canyon?

Switch.

Regrettably, we have been turning to trucks, which are more wasteful of energy and manpower, need more support along the way (gas stations, eateries, tire shops ...). The trains have been cutting routes, trimming schedules, as more and more trucks clog our highways, even in the face of rising gas prices and future shortages.

Evergreen. One wishes.

At the port itself, tall metal beasts wait for their prey; ships bearing goods for our markets, begging for BC's wood, fish and minerals.




I wonder: do we need, really need, all the goods these ships bring? Could we learn to use our local products, decrease our reliance on trucks, boats, trains? Is it wise to keep pumping our waste products into the air we have to breathe, the water our fish and birds live in and on, the fields where we grow our vegetables?

And more: do we really need to expand our highways, buy ever increasing quantities of "stuff"; cheap plastics for our dollar stores, clothes to replace last season's barely-worn but out of style outfits, exotic foods to tease our jaded taste buds, the latest item being hawked on TV, things brighter, shinier, saltier, sweeter, lighter, stronger, faster, softer, warmer, cooler than the ones that were good enough last year?

At the end of the day, waves lap on the rocks. A man throws sticks for a couple of dogs. The sunshine, lower in the sky now, dazzles us. In the distance, a bird surfaces, then dives again.


Isn't this enough?
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Gateway to ruin

A couple of days ago, I wondered about a luscious red shoot on the Gunderson Slough side hill. Hugh tells me it is probably Japanese knotweed.


As he says, "Yikes!" This is an attractive large perennial, bearing plumes of white flowers in season; it was imported to BC as a ornamental shrub. But it is not content to "bloom where it's planted"; it rapidly goes wild, sprouting as far as 7 metres from the original plant, and crowding out native vegetation, especially along riverbanks. It can send up new shoots even through pavement; it will clone itself from a piece of root an inch long; digging it out is more likely to spread it than to kill it.

Invasive, and noxious. One of its many names is "Hancock's curse." I don't know who Hancock is, but I know what he meant.

Sometimes I am filled with a feeling of despair, seeing our green land and its inhabitants disappear under our onslaught. We are an invasive species, like the knotweed.

In the Delta area, on my doorstep, the beaches are polluted, the wetlands where once waterfowl raised their young are now growing what my grandmother called "similarity houses," tall ones with barely space between for an adventuresome sparrow or two. Purple loosestrife clogs the waterways; malls the high ground. Even in the depths of Watershed Park, the roar of traffic drowns out bird calls.

And now we are threatened with the Gateway project; a system of highways going from Golden Ears in the east to Deltaport, 3 km out to sea, providing, so the politicians say,

"a balance of transit, road and bridge improvements, to keep traffic moving, our economy strong and our region liveable."

I don't believe them.

The transit they are thinking of is trucks and large container ships. Gas guzzlers. Major polluters. And a way of moving things around that we need to re-think, in this time of depleted oil reserves and a changing climate, given an already decreasing volume of shipping, and a current trend away from trucks back to railways.

Liveable? Just in Delta alone, the highway will wipe out Gunderson Slough, filling it in and paving it over. Then it travels along the shore of the river, clearcutting and terraforming the green hillside where now eagles stand guard. After the Alex Fraser bridge, it turns south to skirt Burns Bog, the largest domed peat bog on the west coast of North America, an important wildlife home, and a regulator of our lower mainland climate. The highway will cut the Bog off from its seaward opening.

Map (homemade) of the Delta section of Gateway. With birds. Click for full size.

Not content with that damage, the developers plan to cut across the rich farmland of lower Delta, diking, paving and eradicating bird breeding grounds as they go. They then move out into the water, over Roberts Bank, home to several pods of orcas, to double the size of the port there at present, even in the face of decreasing usage due to fuel costs.

A farmer's field, near Ladner, waiting for spring.

"Liveable"? I guess, if you don't mind pollution, if you can take your money and run, if you have never stood and marvelled at the creak of a sandhill crane's wings as he flew over your head, if you think green things, wet things, crawly things are "Ewwww!", if the purpose of land and sea, in your view, is to get across it rapidly, well, yes, then the project will make the Lower Mainland more liveable.

Not for us, though. Nor for the myriad small creatures we share the land with.

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Update: Link to the next "Gateway" post, Deltaport, before Gateway.
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