Thursday - Aug. 15, 2024 - Hwy 1 construction to last until 2031

⛅ High 23C

Good morning!

Summer is just slipping by—and I am ready for fall. I believe that is the reason why, when looking at Election BC’s website, I believed last Friday was the deadline for Harrison candidates to declare themselves. Well, a number of devoted Harrison readers have informed me that it was most definitely not, and there is still much of August left to go.

So let me state the correction for the record: candidates for the Harrison by-election are not finalized, and interested parties have until this Friday to submit their papers. We will publish another small story if there are more candidates who come forward.

– 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

Balancing housing and risk in the valley's rural communities

More houses means more people. More people means more poop. And in one of the Fraser Valley Regional District’s rural areas, that’s a concern that policymakers aren’t yet ready to grapple with.

Last winter, the BC government told all local governments to implement new rules that would help increase the number of homes in the province. By the June 30 deadline, nearly every town, city, village, and district had done so. But not the Fraser Valley Regional District. It has a problem.

The valley’s rural unincorporated communities are serviced by limited water and sewer systems—and in many cases have no government-supported sanitary infrastructure at all. FVRD staff worry that allowing secondary suites or coach houses on more rural properties will create significant problems with the region’s aquifers and groundwater sources.

“We don’t have a really great way of understanding groundwater impacts,” Graham Daneluz, FVRD’s director of planning and development, explained at an April board meeting. “That lack of knowledge, in my view, heightens the risk.”

Elsewhere in the FVRD, the risk of landslides and debris flows has also made officials cautious about green-lighting new homes.

In an effort to learn more about the Fraser Valley’s rural water systems and geohazards—and the potential impact new homes could have—the FVRD asked for more time to identify risks, before finally approving BC’s new housing rules.

The province agreed—but only until the end of 2025.

• Today, Grace looks at why the FVRD said they couldn’t approve BC’s new housing rules in time, what the district hopes to discover over the next 18 months, and what that will mean for the future in some of the Fraser Valley’s rural communities.

Related

Need to Know

🚓 A 61-year-old man is in custody after someone was shot in Yale two weeks ago [Hope Standard]

🏐 A Langley volleyball player is heading to Paris for her third Paralympic Games [Langley Advance Times]

📹 Police are looking for dashcam footage from people driving on the highway before two fatal crashes in Chilliwack and Hope [Fraser Valley Today]

⚰ Former Chilliwack MP Chuck Strahl passed away on Tuesday; he had been battling mesothelioma for years [Mark Strahl/X]

🏠 BC’s new housing rules don’t apply to properties with covenants that prevent higher density, the province has said [Vancouver Sun]

🗳 David Sidhu, the BC United candidate for Abbotsford-West, will no longer run in the upcoming provincial election [Jas Johal/X]

🔥 Two new wildfires started southeast of Hope this week; other local wildfires have been extinguished [Fraser Valley Today]

🌼 The Fraser Valley Invasive Species Society will collect and dispose of bags of Tansy Ragwort in an effort to curb the flower’s spread [Chilliwack Progress]

💰 Someone in Abbotsford won $500,000 on a Lotto Max ticket [Abbotsford News]

📷 CURRENT CAM: Al Peters correctly identified that Upper Sumas Pioneer Park was the location of yesterday's Current Cam photo of the fascinating Sumas Prairie relief map. Congrats to him and a half dozen others for getting one of the trickier Current Cam photos we've run.

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The Agenda

Highway construction through Abbotsford to last until 2031

The provincial government has set a new estimated completion date for highway widening through most of Abbotsford.

On Wednesday, the province announced that it hopes to complete widening work to Highway 11 in Abbotsford by 2031. Construction to widen the highway to the Mt. Lehman Interchange is expected to last until 2029—years longer than originally promised.

The BC NDP had originally declared that Highway 1 would be widened to Abbotsford by 2026. In the first edition of the Fraser Valley Current, then-Minister of State for Infrastructure Bowinn Ma declared the timeline "tight," but didn't back off the original promise. Since then, though, it has become obvious that widening will take years longer. Last year, Minister of State for Infrastructure Dan Coulter suggested to The Current that construction would last until the mid-2030s. A government staffer quickly wrote to The Current to say Coulter misspoke and that a timeline hadn't been set.

Now, Victoria has set itself another deadline. The government predicts construction will take another five years, but wrap up before Coulter's projection. On Wednesday, the government said major construction between 264 Street and Mt. Lehman Road will start this year. Construction on the stretch of highway between Mt. Lehman Road and Highway 11/Sumas Way is anticipated to start in 2026. Although the government has promised to widen the highway to the western edge of Chilliwack, there is still no timeline for that work.

Corrections

In yesterday’s newsletter, we incorrectly stated that the list of candidates for the Harrison by-election was finalized. Candidates actually have until the end of the business day this Friday to submit their nomination packages.

We also shared a Need to Know link about the Chilliwack Fair's acceptance of an NDP shade tent after it rejected a proposed information booth by the BC Conservative Party (we used the word "tent" in the link). A representative for the fair says the event would have accepted a Conservative shade tent, had the Conservative Party offered it, and that the party was rejected because of a policy against campaigning.

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🗓 Things to do this week/end

🎨 Mural festival: The Chilliwack Mural Festival returns to the city's downtown from today to Saturday, Aug. 17. Participate in mural tours, watch painters work, and enjoy an art market. Details online.

🎻 Outdoor orchestra: Abbotsford's Mill Lake Park will host a symphony orchestra on Friday, Aug. 16 starting at 6:30pm. Listen to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the Blue Danube Waltz, and Pirates of the Caribbean from your lawn chair. Details online.

🎬 History film: The Tashme Historical Society and the Kikiai Collaborative are hosting a double feature at the Hope Cinema on Sunday, Aug. 18. Watch Henry's Glasses, a film about resilience and hope in Japanese internment camps, and The Tashme Project, a film about second-generation Japanese Canadians after WWII. Tickets online.

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Catch up

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