Colliery Dam Park
Colliery Dam Park is one of Nanaimo’s hidden wonders. It is a place of adventure, tranquility and excitement that has been passed down from generation to generation.
Brief History
On October 22, 2012, City Council, upon the recommendation of City Staff, passed a motion to demolish the two dams that form the core of the park in order to alleviate seismic risk concerns. This decision was made during an “in-camera” (secret) meeting, and was made without any public consultation. Since that time, through the work of an assigned Technical Committee and expert engineers, seismic risk concerns were proven to be based on inaccurate information and plans to demolish the two dams have since been retracted.
However, while seismic risk concerns have been addressed, questions towards potential flood risk concerns from the Technical Committee and expert engineers remain unanswered.
On April 9, 2015 the City of Nanaimo received an order from the Provincial Dam Safety Section to address potential flood concerns by selecting from one of two proposed remediation options for the Lower Colliery Dam and thereafter evaluate options to remediate the Middle Colliery Dam.
The Options
City Council does not consider either of these two options to be acceptable options for the City of Nanaimo due to the nonsensical benefit-cost ratio (spending $3-10 million to prevent $2.5 million or less in potential risk), and the excessive amount of invasive destruction that would take place as a result within this Community Registered Heritage Park. The Colliery Dam Preservation Society also considers these two options to be unacceptable, and endorses City Council in their desire to finish studies and complete proper due diligence before choosing a remediation option.
Requests by City Council to allow a reasonable time to complete further due diligence as defined by expert engineers and the previously assigned Technical Committee in order to complete studies and define acceptable remediation option solutions have been denied by the Provincial Dam Safety Section. Find out more about this in the Current State of Affairs.
If the expert recommendations to complete further studies are not taken seriously and acted upon previous to implementing a remediation plan, significant construction costs upwards of $3-10 million will result, along with potentially irreversible environmental changes that could seriously affect the eco-system and enjoyment of the park.
If you would like to help ensure that our tax dollars are well spent, and save this important park from radical and irrevocable changes click here to find out how you can help.