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To Mayor and Council re: Colliery Dams Decision
Mayor McKay and Councillors:
As you are very well aware, the situation in which we find ourselves with the Comptroller of Water is both vexing and perplexing. Nanaimo has been ordered to make a choice between two options in a situation where the majority of Council are unable to reach a clear decision on behalf of our community due to insufficient information.
Accordingly it is suggested that, in the name of the community of Nanaimo, the Comptroller be recognized by Nanaimo City Council as having the authority to choose one of the two options offered to the City, be authorized to implement that decision and to send the bill for its implementation to the City for payment. This opportunity is clearly open to the Comptroller and its rejection would cast doubt on why it was not accepted.
Such a response acknowledges the authority of the Comptroller; permits the Comptroller to make the limited choice which they gave to us; transfers responsibility for the project to its rightful source, and preserves the dignity of Nanaimo in the face of an order which, as it stands, is seen to be unjust.
It should be difficult for the Comptroller to reject this offer which clearly accomplishes the end demanded. It might also lead to some further political examination of the situation at the provincial level.
Should the resulting implementation result in excessive costs or park mutilation, it would call out for extensive explanation to the public, not only of Nanaimo, but all BC Municipalities. I ask that you carefully consider this possibility for response before either capitulation or defiance.
Ron Bolin
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
“Signs of drought appear to be in Western Canada for the long term . . . ”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/signs-of-drought-appear-to-be-in-western-canada-for-the-long-term/article24954511/
So here we have a definitive (as much as it is possible to be so) assessment of the weather situation, as it affects the Colliery Dams decision faced by Nanaimo City Council as of July 22: indeed a daunting task.
Daunting, indeed, because of draconian and personal threats should council not deliver on provincial government’s bidding: extra ordinary to say the least. Has council consulted with in-house legal advice to authenticate such unusual demagoguery?
The coloured map above shows the geographic extent of the meteorological situation across the Province and it is evident that while Colliery Dams are in a most vulnerable location the proposed location of the Peace River, Site C dam, some 900km to the North East, isn’t much better.
Is there a correlation, in the minds of our august MLAs, between what is evidently a drought across the Province?
My point being, if there is no existential threat to the Colliery Dams over-topping what is the point of wasting billions of dollars of Site C if the Peace dries out, which according to the best expert advice, see map above, is a possibility!
Are Nanaimo councilors’ deliberations on Colliery Dam Park, being used as a Bell-Weather, con-commitment, subject to extra-legal personal threat, by a provincial government committed, apparently solely for political reasons, to a Site C dam that may prove to be a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that will never deliver?