Environmentalists and Lower Mainland First Nations said Wednesday they won’t give up the fight against the controversial Roberts Bank port expansion.
The federal government approved the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project (RBT2) in April, subject to 370 conditions for protecting the environment, local wildlife and First Nations land-use activities.
The project is still waiting on an environmental assessment certificate from the B.C. government.
The federal government has touted the project’s economic benefits, including increasing the port’s capacity by 50 per cent, generate $2.3 billion in GDP and provide $519 million in tax revenue.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Wildness Committee conservation and policy campaigner Charlotte Dawe said the federal government was overestimating the economic benefits while underestimating the environmental impacts.
“Almost every industrial project that’s currently driving species to extinction in Canada was approved on the basis of these so-called ‘mitigations,'” she said. “These mitigations do-not work, especially when you factor in cumulative impacts to an already sensitive and degraded Fraser estuary and the fact that species are already struggling to survive there.”
Dawe went on to say the project will involve significant automation, meaning layoffs and the loss of well-paying jobs.
Tsleil-Waututh Nation representative Reuben George said the project was another expansion of heavy industry that will add to existing challenges to biodiversity and climate change.
The effects of that industrialization, he said, have become impossible to ignore — manifesting in disasters like B.C.’s 2021 floods and this year’s Alberta wildfires.
“I grew up here … when I was a kid every creek, river and stream had salmon and trout running through it. Now there’s none,” George said. “They’re saying it’s for jobs, but what about the environment? What about the orca whales? Just like (the Trans Mountain expansion), they’re going to be gone because of the increased traffic … what are we doing to protect these things?”
The planned expansion will see the construction of a new three-berth terminal in Roberts Bank aimed at supporting growing trade in the region.
The $3.5 billion cost will be funded by private investors and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.
According to the project’s website, the new terminal would be located in “deep, subtidal waters to minimize new environmental effects.”
A 2020 federal review panel found the expansion would have “adverse residual and cumulative effects” on the ecosystem and made 71 recommendations to mitigate pollution and noise.
The project is facing court challenges from the Washington state-based Lummi Nation, as well as a coalition of environmental groups.
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