Friday - Dec. 6, 2024 - Chilliwack considering recycling changes

🌧 High 10C

Good morning!

My husband and I are going to a wedding in Vancouver tomorrow (congratulations Lizzie and Anthony!) and for the first time in my life, I crave the advice of an early 2000s women’s magazine.

In every edition, those magazines highlighted outfits that could seamlessly transition from day to night. This was a problem that I assumed no one in real life had—why would you need to go straight from the office to the club? But now, as we prepare for a mid-morning Catholic ceremony and transition to an elegant dinner reception, I see the appeal. What accessories can I add to my velvet evening gown to make it church appropriate and daylight-friendly, while still maintaining its nighttime appeal?

This is a problem my husband does not have—and never will. Pre-set uniforms for all occasions at work, and one good suit for home. It would be hard to launch a catalogue of magazines on that.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope (We have had to temporarily change our forecast links to the Weather Network due to a technical error.)

🚘 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

The (forest) fire for the trees

Yesterday, we shared Tyler’s massive foray into BC’s wildfire history, and his exploration of the challenges associated with both letting fires burn and stopping them completely.

Today, we are highlighting two related stories from our journalism colleagues at The Tyee and Cabin Radio, looking at issues of forest management and wildfire suppression.

Across British Columbia, forests are running out of trees. As Zoë Yunker reports for The Tyee, this is not only a major problem for BC’s forestry industry, but also for the old growth forests and province at large.

“In BC forestry we have this black box,” says Erik Piikkila, a forest ecologist and former adviser in BC’s forest inventory branch. “We lift the lid sometimes and we look at it and go ‘Oh my God, what a mess’ and then slam the lid down.”

• Today, join Zoë as she lifts the lid on BC’s “black box” of forestry to look at BC’s ecosystems, the logging industry, and the disintegrating tight rope the province is trying to walk.

Meanwhile, in the North West Territories, Cabin Radio’s Ollie Williams considered the impact that a previous fire might have on future wildfire risk.

Once, fire scars could be relied upon to protect communities for a significant amount of time. But now, it appears that wildfires don’t care to follow conventional wisdom.

Forests that had been decimated by wildfires one year are sometimes burning again the next—and scientists are only now figuring out what triggers that tipping point.

• Check out Ollie’s story about wildfires, burn areas, and the climatic changes that make fires more likely to come back to the same place year after year.

Related

Need to Know

📞 BC is launching an independent review of its 9-1-1 and E-Comm services [BC Gov News] / The Current wrote about Abbotsford’s minute-long 9-1-1 wait times last year [FVC]

🚓 Shots were fired on Holly Street in Abbotsford Thursday morning; police say no one was injured [Abbotsford News]

🚧 Work to widen a four-kilometre section of Lougheed Highway between Mission and Maple Ridge will take a year longer than expected and $25 million more than budgeted [Maple Ridge News]

⚖ A Chilliwack man was sentenced to 12 years in jail for multiple drug and gun offences [Chilliwack Progress]

📧 An Abbotsford renter is concerned about the third-party payment system his landlord is now using in response to the ongoing postal strike [Abbotsford News]

🚒 A fire near downtown Hope was extinguished by the building’s sprinklers [Hope Standard]

🐻 Harrison is re-examining its waste bylaws in an effort to reduce human-bear interactions [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

🛠 Chilliwack’s former Downtown Business Centre is set to be demolished to make way for a six-storey development near District 1881 [Fraser Valley Today]

🗳 BC Premier David Eby says Canada has hatched a gameplan to manage American tariffs, with Conservatives lobbying the Republicans and left-leaning leaders courting the Democrats [CTV]

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The Agenda

Chilliwack considering new plan for curbside collection

Changes could be coming for garbage and recycling pick up in Chilliwack, as the city looks to establish a new collection contract.

The municipality wants the next contract to include city-provided recycling bins, similar to the green carts used for compost. The contract could also see recycling collection switched from weekly to bi-weekly, like garbage collection is now, and have glass collection picked up just once a month.

(On Tuesday, we reported about Abbotsford’s promise to finally introduce curbside glass collection. See that story here.)

The hope is that the changes would help reduce the cost of recycling collection, although it may also slightly reduce the amount of money that Recycle BC gives the City of Chilliwack for its recycling efforts. If the new contract includes automated collection (i.e. where the truck tips the bin into the back, rather than a person), there is a better chance of the recycling being contaminated with garbage, since a worker won’t be seeing each item of recycling as it goes in.

Contamination in recycling is a big issue, as more contamination means higher processing costs. Recycle BC recently increased the proportion of allowable contamination from 3% to 5%. In Chilliwack, recycling regularly averages 5.3% non-recyclable material. (The city noted that Recycle BC has been satisfied with the city’s efforts to reduce contamination over the past several years.)

Chilliwack’s new curbside collection contract will come into effect sometime after April 2025, as the current contract has options for two one-year extensions. The request for proposals for the new contract closes Friday, Dec. 20.

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🗓 Things to do

Dickens tea: The Agassiz-Harrison Historical Society hosts its annual Dickens Tea on Saturday at the Friendship House on Morrow Road. Tickets are available at the museum. Details online.

Christmas chorus: Langley Community Chorus is performing in its first of three Christmas concerts on Sunday at St. Dunstan's Anglican Church in Aldergrove. The concert begins at 3pm. Details and tickets online.

Alpaca market: Kensington Prairie Farm hosts an Alpacas and Artisan Holiday Market on Saturday and Sunday. Head to the farm to check out local vendors, meet some alpacas, and see Santa. Tickets and details online. (If you want to read more about Kensington Prairie's alpacas, check out our story here.)

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Catch up

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