Friday - April 4, 2025 - Langley still investigating townhome affects

⛅ High 17C

Good morning!

Well folks, it’s time for me to say goodbye. Not for long though! Just for the week. I am off on a long-awaited honeymoon that will see me and my husband traverse (most of) the country by train. I have packed six books, two magazines, and one puzzle book, which I hope will be enough to keep me busy until we get to Toronto. If I’ve miscalculated, I can always engage in my second-favourite holiday activity: outlining the plots, character arcs, and subtext of my favourite books to my husband. (He is really very patient, and thankfully doesn’t care about spoilers.)

Be nice to Tyler while I’m gone, and make sure he knows about every little mistake I wasn’t there to catch!

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope 

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

News

Leq’á:mel’s $50M poop dream

A local First Nation has a plan to deal with the Fraser Valley’s rural poop.

The Leq’á:mel First Nation’s economic development corporation wants to build a $50 million facility to process the region’s waste and turn some of it into fertilizer.

If approved, the roughly 66,000-square-foot building would be located on the southern banks of the Fraser River, between Chilliwack and Sumas mountains.

There are hopes the project could take in waste from vast regions of the Fraser Valley, four years after two of the region’s major cities first stopped accepting trucked liquid waste from unincorporated communities.

• Today, Josh looks at a potential solution to the Fraser Valley’s rural poop challenge.

Related

Need to Know

🚓 Police searched a Chilliwack home Wednesday in connection to an isolated criminal incident [Fraser Valley Today]

🏏 Langley Township is looking for a new cricket pitch after halting work on a field at Bell Park last month [Langley Advance Times]

👉 A Langley woman was fined after allegedly riding on the trunk of a car in a Mission parking lot while wearing a dinosaur costume [Mission Record]

🎾 A Chilliwack resident has been drafted into the Canadian National Pickleball League [Abbotsford News]

💰 Nature Trust BC has raised enough money to buy 36 acres of land near Lake Errock [Agassiz Harrison Observer] / The Current wrote about Nature Trust BC’s purchase plan back in February [FVC]

📖 Four authors from Hope and Kelowna have released a book on Hope’s chainsaw carvings and the artists who created them [Hope Standard]

🗳 Canada will implement its own 25% counter-tariffs on American-made vehicles [Global News] / A vice-president at AutoTrader said he expects used car prices to rise as a knock-on effect of the tariffs [CBC]

🟠 An Indigenous education program for Transport Canada employees met with racist reactions from within the federal department [The Tyee]

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🗳 Election 2025

The federal election campaign continues until election day on Monday, April 28. Advance voting will take place over the Easter weekend, from Friday, April 18 to Monday, April 21. Find everything you need to know—including where to vote—by visiting one of our local election hubs:

Chilliwack, Hope, and the Eastern Valley | Abbotsford and Mission | Langley

The latest

👉 John Aldag is now running for the Liberal Party in Langley Township-Fraser Heights [Langley Advance Times]

👉 Zeeshan Khan, a school support worker, is running with the Liberal party in Chilliwack-Hope [Fraser Valley Today]

👉 The NDP have announced they would revive war-era Victory Bonds if elected [CTV] / CBC has collected the parties’ promises and policies on issues like climate change, defence, housing, and US-relations [CBC]

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The Agenda

Langley still investigating potential impacts of more townhomes

The Township of Langley is moving forward on policies that could help it further boost development in the rapidly growing municipality.

In December of 2023, the provincial government instituted new rules to force local governments to change their zoning to allow for “small-scale multi-unit housing” on single-family properties. The bill meant that triplexes and townhomes would automatically be allowed on certain properties in urban areas. The Township of Langley did not approve the bylaws by the June 2024 deadline, and asked for an extension. At the time, Mayor Eric Woodward said the bill did not allow for “adequate parking for Langley, with such chronic, poor transit service.” (You can read more about that here.)

The province denied Langley’s request for an extension, and the Township gave final approval to its new bylaws in November of 2024.

In June of 2024—before the provincial deadline—council told staff to complete an engineering capacity study to review water and sewer capacity in the municipality and identify the potential infrastructure impacts of additional homes. Staff were also told to “defer facilitation of any new service connections” related to development under the new rules until the review was finished.

Staff said the review is currently in progress, and is expected to be complete by the end of the year. Properties that are currently without water or sewer hookups will have their eligibility for new homes determined when the review is finished.

Township staff are also in the process of developing a form and character development permit area for small-scale multi-unit homes. That policy is set to come back to council for review soon.

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🗓 Things to do

UFV events: UFV's Abbotsford campus hosts a series of free events on Saturday for its alumni and friends weekend. Events include free talks from professors, kids activities, a drag show, and the premiere for a documentary about UFV's CIVL Radio. The full schedule of events is available online.

Epilepsy art: The Kartion Art Gallery in Abbotsford hosts Epilepsy In Full Colour: Beyond Diagnosis, an exhibition in partnership with the Centre for Epilepsy & Seizure Education in British Columbia, from Saturday, April 5 to Saturday, April 26. A reception will be held this Saturday from noon to 2pm. Visitors will be able to meet the artists and engage with their works. Details online.

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Catch up

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