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Rezoning will threaten watershed

An open letter to Mayor Dianne Watts and Council regarding a rezoning application for property near 24 Avenue and 184 Street.
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Letter-writer Catharina Leidel questions a zoning-change proposal for property near 184 Street and 24 Avenue.

Editor:

Open letter to Mayor Dianne Watts and Council:

According to the Peace Arch News, Jan. 3, the Pacific Land Group Inc (Oleg Verbenkov) wants to rezone two big parcels of land on 24 Avenue at 184 Street, from a General Agriculture Zone (A-1) to a Comprehensive Zone (CD) in order to turn more agricultural land into eight business parks and other industrial businesses.

And so will pollute the neighbouring ALR land, and the streams and creeks of the Erickson Creek Watershed. The area you studied from 2006 till 2008.

Because if you look at the maps of the Erickson Creek Watershed – your “Global Perspective, Social Focus” handout (the one you didn’t give out) – you will see that the polluted runoff of the Campbell Heights industrial area runs into the Dall Brook, lakes, Erickson Creek, Nicomekl River and Pacific Ocean.

Didn’t you, the provincial or federal government install a million-dollar fish ladder between the lakes and the Erickson Creek on 29A Avenue in August/September 2011?

So, all your Campbell Heights construction will not do the South Surrey fish habitat’s growth any good – but maybe that’s what you want to accomplish?

Because it’s strange that not only have you been bulldozing the Campbell Height’s agricultural areas so far but you want to destroy the Grandview Heights 4 area, too.

So your Global Perspective, Local Focus will become the environmental apocalypse of South Surrey if you go ahead and let the Pacific Land Group Inc. develop another piece of one of the last remaining agricultural land areas in South Surrey.

Catharina Leidel, Surrey