Food and Community

maxresdefaultWithin the Christian tradition, the apostle Matthew is credited with writing the following account of events during the last supper that Jesus shared with his closest followers.

26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples. ‘Take it and eat,’ he said, ‘this is my body.’
27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he handed it to them saying, ‘Drink from this, all of you,
28 for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (New Jerusalem Bible, Matt. 26.26-28).

I think these words exemplify the depth of the connection between food and community, a connection that is likely present in most cultures and traditions.  Sharing food, especially food that we have had a hand in gathering, preparing or growing, is sharing a part of ourselves. Sharing food also plays a central part in healing the divisions between people and communities.  The roll of sharing food in sustaining and strengthening community is rooted deep in our culture, if not in our genes.  For most of human history, people existed in small, hunter-gatherer communities, where some in the community hunted and others gathered, and both came together to share what they had harvested.

I recently posted the argument that even though agriculture within the boundaries of Kelowna is not that significant to the local economy, global environment, or local food security, it produces many values beyond food that are important and therefore agriculture is worth supporting.  I presented statistics gleaned from a variety of sources to back up my points.  Some readers were outraged.  They asserted that my facts were wrong, but when I inquired, could not produce anything that challenged what I had posted.  I delved a bit deeper into the work that has been done on local food production and poverty alleviation and on local food production and environmental impacts.  The point I made, that local food production isn’t automatically better for the environment or helpful for the food insecure in our community, isn’t challenged by any rigorous studies I could find.  Why then is it so important to some people that these facts not be true?

http://youngagrarians.org/

http://youngagrarians.org/

Farming is hard.  The Stan Roger’s song “Field Behind the Plow” brings tears to my eyes when I think of the hours I spent on a tractor in my youth, and of my father and his dedication to the farm.  Farmers don’t have the luxury of a regularly scheduled job.  Their work hours are determined by weather and season, and the plethora of unexpected things that must be dealt with.  Farmers don’t have the luxury of a regular salary and a union negotiating on their behalf.  Rather, they are stuck between the risks generated by the natural system with which they work and the risks from the market, a result of the way those natural systems have played out elsewhere in the world, changes in people’s tastes and preferences, and all the government policies that impact on agriculture around the world.

home_graph_3

Global food prices have been on a downward trend for much of recent history. Over the last decade they rose for a number of years, peaking in inflation adjusted terms at more than 50% above the price level in the early 2000s.  However, they have now come almost all the way back down to where they were, and they have come down as rapidly as they rose.  There are a number of explanations for the rise, ranging from government support for biofuels that took land out of food production, rapid economic growth in China and increasing demand for meat and similar products that are further up the food chain, and events like droughts and floods.  Why have they come back down?  Farmers have taken advantage of the higher prices, and increased their production.

Farmer’s, and the industries that support them – fertilizer, seed, equipment, plant breeding, etc. – are very good at what they do.  That food production has increased faster than the global population is a testament to how good the agriculture industry is at meeting global food demand.  In fact, in some ways, they may be too good.  It has long been noticed that in spite of improving technology, the situation of the average farmer doesn’t seem to get any better.  Agricultural economist Willard Cochrane described this dilemma as a treadmill (nice presentation at www.aae.wisc.edu/aae320/AgPolicy/Treadmill.pptx). The elements of this treadmill are:

  1. A new technology emerges that lowers production costs.
  2. Early adopters (often larger farms) produce more and earn above normal profit.
  3. Extra output leads to lower market price, and lower profit or loss for rest of industry.
  4. Rest of industry forced to adopt.  Further lowers price till all earning normal profit.
  5. Those unable to adopt exit the industry, typically selling to larger farmers.
  6. Consumers gain from lower food prices, farmers overall see no long term gain.
  7. Industry over time adjusts to fewer, larger producers.
http://www.osymigrant.org/Brief_Globalization-of-Food.pdf

http://www.osymigrant.org/Brief_Globalization-of-Food.pdf

So, farmers and the agricultural industry have done a remarkable job of feeding the population of the world.  However, the average farmer hasn’t gained much as a result. Those who have done well tend to be the early adopters, innovators in trying out new technology, in exploring new marketing opportunities, etc.  Those who can afford to do this also tend to be the larger farms, perpetuating the cycle favoring ever increasing farm size and ever shrinking share of the population involved in primary agriculture.  All of this means that the return farmers have been getting on average for their labors and their investment hasn’t been increasing, while the share of the household budget making it to the farm gate has been steadily falling.

If that wasn’t bad enough, things get worse in places like Kelowna.  Land in the urban fringe is land that can be used for something other than farming.  A basic fact of property markets is that the price properties trade at depends on what they can potentially be used for, not what they are actually used for.  Agricultural land in Kelowna has various potential uses, including rural estates and development.  The Agricultural Land Reserve is an attempt to limit the development option, but growing cities need land, and the ALR has mechanisms to ‘exclude’ land.  Those buying property know that there is potential to get it out of the ALR and are willing to pay more than the agricultural value of the land to buy into this potential.  If a farmer wishes to purchase land in the urban fringe, she likely has to pay more than the land will ever pay back from the crop she can grow. This makes it very hard for anyone who wants to start farming to do so in the urban fringe. However, since it is costly to establish a farm, new farmers often need to be close to urban centers to hold down other jobs, jobs that enable them to finance their farm in the early stages.  In Kelowna, it also means competing against ‘lifestyle’ farmers, who retire to the Okanagan and take up farming as a retirement project, with no real need to make a living from it.

http://vancouver.healthcastle.com/free-events-vancouvers-farmers-markets

http://vancouver.healthcastle.com/free-events-vancouvers-farmers-markets

So if making a living from farming in the urban fringe is hard and if there are alternative, more profitable uses for the land, why should we seek to protect agricultural land in Kelowna?  In my last post, I listed a number of reasons, linked together with the idea of ‘multifunctionality’.  The multifunctionality, the multiple functions provided, by agriculture is something we don’t always recognize, and I think that we can make poor decisions about land use if we don’t look at the whole picture.  That whole picture should include the many services agriculture in our community provides which don’t show up as cash someone can take to the bank.

The whole picture should also include the role that food and local food production plays in building and strengthening the connections we have with each other in our community. Sharing food is an important part of connection and community, something recognized by many cultures and traditions, such as the Christian tradition I started this post with. Producing food within the boundaries of the city of Kelowna can contribute to our connection as a community.  The more people in the community that can be involved with some aspect of food production, the more opportunities there are to build those connections.  Providing the opportunities for people to be involved requires creative policy approaches that recognize the unique challenges posed by farming in the urban fringe, and that support agriculture in contributing all it can in the many ways it does to the health and well being of our community.

http://rustikmagazine.com/community-suppers-celebrate-your-sense-of-place/

So back to the question of why were some people so upset by what I wrote in my previous post? I’m sure each person has their own answer.  When I listen to the many varied and sometimes contradictory reasons people have for supporting local food production, the link I see is between food and community.  We live at a time where social connections don’t just happen.  We can easily sit at home and have little connection with other people or the natural world.  Local food production is a way for us to connect with our local environment, and a way to connect with others in our community.  Those connections are fundamental to human health and well being, and keeping agriculture and food production as a part of the Kelowna landscape is an important part of protecting and enhancing our local quality of life.  I think we lack an effective language to speak about these things, and so have come to rely on economic and environmental arguments as justifications.  Therefore, challenging the environmental and economic justifications people have come up with threatens something much deeper than just those justifications.   I’m sure that those who stand to gain by developing agricultural land are quite familiar with the facts that I described in my last post, and use them as part of their arguments in favour of development.  I hope we can find a more convincing language to describe the importance of local food production than the easily refuted economic and environmental arguments. There is far more to the health and well being of the people of Kelowna than economic growth alone.

And most importantly, if you care about these issues and want to be heard, pay attention for opportunities to contribute to the updating of Kelowna’s agricultural plan.

Kelowna Agricultural Plan: Be Heard!

peaches-aboutTo me, agriculture, and in particular fresh, juicy apricots and peaches define the Okanagan.  Before buying a place and planting some of my own trees, I would keep visiting the BC Tree Fruits store in anticipation of the first apricots, buying a box as soon as I could, and polishing it off within a week, largely on my own, before going back for the next one.  Once the peaches arrived, same story. These fruits are what make my summer.  To me, this place would truly lack something special if that local season of soft fruits wasn’t part of our year.

The city of Kelowna is in the process of updating its agricultural plan (Capital News). I think that this is an important opportunity for us to define the role that agriculture has in our community.  There will be opportunities for public participation, and I hope that the citizens of our city choose to participate.  In deciding what the role of agriculture is in our community, I think we need to face some important facts.  I recently gave a talk that reflected some of these issues, with the slides available here.

Fact #1: Agriculture is only a small part of the Kelowna economy.  Agriculture was a key industry in the settlement history of the Okanagan valley and in particular the city of Kelowna.  However, the city has grown, and other industries have taken over.  As reported by Statistics Canada, the share of the Kelowna population directly employed in agriculture is under 2%.  The share of businesses involved in agriculture is less than 3.5%, and many of those are businesses that have no employees.  Even if we are generous and say that each job in agriculture supports two jobs elsewhere in the economy, we are still talking less than 6% of jobs.  Within Kelowna, agriculture is a small industry.

thomas-malthus-e1378486464478Fact #2: We don’t need local agriculture to feed ourselves.  We do need agriculture to feed ourselves.  Farmers feed the world.  However, that doesn’t mean the farms need to be nearby, such as within the urban boundaries of Kelowna.  Over the long term, food prices have been falling, even as global populations have been increasing.  Yield per acre and yield per person have been increasing everywhere in the world.  Malthus’ predictions that the ability to produce food will be what eventually limits population growth – famine if pestilence and disease are insufficient – seems so far to have been kept at bay.  Loosing the food production that occurs in Kelowna would have little discernible impact on food prices or food availability in the city.

Fact #3: Local agriculture has little relationship to food security.  Food security is a term people like to throw around when talking about local agriculture.  If we are talking about protecting our ability to produce food in the face of the risk of other suppliers not being available – drought in California being the recent example – then local food production contributes very little.  This kind of food security is best addressed by ensuring that we have strong trade agreements that allow local food retailers access to multiple sources.  If food security is about ensuring those on low income can acquire the food they need, then giving food to the needy would have to be the priority of local food producers.  It isn’t. There are gleaners, and there are donations, but these are what happens when the farmer is unable to sell the crop.  Local farmers are not growing crops to give them away.  This kind of food security is best addressed by helping those on low income to increase their income.

Fact #4: Buying local is not better for the economy.  What is good for the economy is producing the goods and services we consume at the lowest possible cost – which includes environmental costs.  If agriculture is the most profitable use of local land, then we wouldn’t need the ALR, and we wouldn’t be perpetually worried about the loss of local farms and farmland.  This ties to helping the poor.  If one buys expensive produce from a local producer rather than lower cost produce at a big box store, then there is less money available to donate to helping the poor.

Fact #5: Buying local is not better for the environment.  What is good for the environment is having the smallest total environmental impact from the goods we consume.  This Freakonomics blog lays out nicely some of the issues.  First, transportation is only a small part of the environmental impact of the food we consume. That means we have to compare the rest of the environmental impacts.  If growing food locally requires more land, or more irrigation, or more fertilizer, or more pesticides, per kilo of product than what is needed to produce it elsewhere, then growing local may actually be worse for the environment than bringing in food products from those places that are best at producing them.

These are some pretty darn depressing facts for anyone who wants to have agriculture as part of our community.  The upshot of these facts is that on the basis of economics or the environment, local food cannot be easily defended.  If local food production and local agriculture is to be part of our communities, it has to be so for reasons that go beyond the simple economics of jobs and farm profits and the simple environmental arguments that local is automatically better for the environment.  We need to think far more broadly about the part agriculture plays in our communities.

So, beyond food, what does agriculture provide in Kelowna?

about_apples

Source: http://www.investokanagan.com/

Landscape: Orchards, vinyards, market gardens, and pastures with grazing animals are important parts of the visual landscape we enjoy here in Kelowna.  Look at real estate agent websites, and it isn’t uncommon for that visual landscape to be something they ‘sell’.

Open Space: Agricultural lands are not developed lands.  Being able to escape from the bustle of the city to nearby spaces is valuable to many people.

Father Pandosy MissionCulture and History: While agriculture may presently represent a small part of the Okanagan economy, it was instrumental to the settlement of the Okangan by immigrants who arrived during the last couple of centuries.  Maintaining a working landscape provides a connection with that history and our cultural heritage.  A related issue is the importance of protecting lands that provide traditional indigenous foods, but that is a discussion for another day.

Habitats and Environmental Services: Agricultural landscapes can be important habitats for natural species.  They may need to be managed with these services in mind. However, if lost, so is this option.

orchard-kelownaConnection with the Seasons: When agriculture is part of our landscape, we are exposed to the natural cycles that farmers live with. Seeing spring blossoms, summer irrigation, fall harvest, and winter pruning provides us with a deeper connection with the place in which we live.  This is particularly true when we as a community make a concerted effort to integrate these seasons into the events and activities hosted as a community.

Farming ‘vicariously’: Many urban residents long to be involved with food production. Some are fortunate enough to own property and have the time to garden.  Many others are not so lucky.  However, farmers markets and other opportunities to interact with local agricultural producers provides urban residents an opportunity to be more connected to where their food comes from.

Building Community: I recently attended an event organized by the Central Okanagan Food Policy Council.  A unifying theme among the presenters was that being involved with food production built connections between people, people who may never have interacted around any other issue.  Food is one of the few topics which anyone, irrespective of education, affluence, race, etc. can share about.

Source: http://www.okanaganstables.com/

Source: http://www.okanaganstables.com/

Recreational Activities: Wine tourism, agri-tourism, equestrian activities, etc. all take place on agricultural land, and activities like cycling and walking are often enjoyed in agricultural areas.

On a quarter section many kilometers from the nearest residence, these factors are likely not that important.  In the rural-urban fringe they can be large.  The agricultural land in Kelowna is land in the rural-urban fringe, and these non-food services that agriculture provides are important here.  Some experts have taken to speaking about the ‘multifunctionality‘ of agriculture, to clearly acknowledge that agriculture provides much more than just food and fiber commodities. Some European nations recognize this multifunctionality explicitly and make it part of their policy goals (e.g. Switzerland).

The present agricultural plan does mention a number of these non-food services. However, it does not explicitly mention multifunctionality, nor does it make any effort to assess how important or valuable these non-food services are.  A substantial thrust of the document is towards supporting agriculture as an industry, with some management necessary to deal with some of the negative challenges, such as wetland loss, that we seek to reduce. Can we clearly recognize the multifunctionality of agriculture, and take that multifunctionality into account when making decisions about land use conversion? Can we develop policies that identify and support those non-food services that local agriculture provides?

If you care about these issues, be sure to pay attention for the opportunities to make your voice heard.

Local Issues: Penticton Beaches

Water is an amazing resource.  Not only do we need it for basic survival, to grow our food, and to provide valuable ecosystem services, we also enjoy it as part of our recreation – beaches, boating, etc.  Conversations involving water are never simple!

City Council in Penticton has recently approved a proposal to redevelop part of the beach park along Skaha Lake, giving something like 20% of the park to a private interest for thirty years.

The Okanagan valley is expected to attract more than 100,000 residents in the next 20 years, approximately a 30% population increase.  Most of these people will settle in or close to the major population centers around Okanagan Lake, Kelowna, Penticton, Vernon and West Kelowna (Okanagan Valley Profile).  Many of these people move here because of the climate and natural beauty of the valley, and access to the lakes is part of that.

Among Okanagan communities, only Penticton has large, uninterrupted beach waterfront.  Kelowna has the longest sandy foreshore on the lake, but most of this is behind private homes.  While technically the land is public up to the high water mark, these private property owners are known to not be particularly welcoming or accommodating of the public who may want to use the beach in front of their residence.  The public is therefore restricted to using the limited public beach space.

Beaches are interesting places.  Excepting some romantic fantasies, most people do not want to go to long, uninterrupted beaches with nobody else around.  We go to the beach to play in the water with friends and family, to sit on the shore with friends, and in part also to see and be seen.  However, beyond a point, beaches do become crowded, and the experience becomes less enjoyable.  This means that as the population grows, the value of beach space to the public that does not own beachfront increases.  All else equal, communities should be purchasing and developing more public beach space as their population grows.

However, all things are not equal.  While being the only person on a large beach looses its appeal pretty quickly, having a small piece of beach where one gets to choose who to share it with is attractive, and this gets more attractive the more crowded the public beaches get.  Waterfront property gets bought by the wealthy.  They invest in building large, expensive homes, further driving up the price, which makes it that much more expensive for local government to purchase these properties and convert them to public spaces.  Local governments acquire road allowances often decades before they are needed, to avoid the cost of purchasing developed land in the future.  Maybe beachfront should be (have been) thought of the same way, acquired before it was expensive and held for public use.  Here in the Okanagan, only Penticton seems to have acted this way.

What of Penticon’s plans?  A portion of the park will be leased to a private interest, who will have exclusive use of that portion of the park to operate a for profit business.  The city will receive lease payments and there is a profit sharing arrangement to be worked out as well.  The justification put forward to the media by Penticton politicians seems to emphasize these financial aspects of the arrangement, suggesting that they made the right choice because it is financially beneficial to the city government.

The world would be a much easier place to manage if cash flow measures such as profits and tax revenues were a complete measure of everything that mattered.  Public beaches do provide value.  Measuring that value is challenging, in part because no admission fee is charged.  However, people do pay to use the beach, in the form of the time it takes to get there, fuel and wear and tear if they drive, etc.  Since the value of the enjoyment from visiting the beach must on average be greater than these costs if people are to continue going to the beach, we can estimate part of the value of this enjoyment by measuring what people spend to access the beach.  This includes the time it takes to get to the beach and back home – driving/cycling/walking time, time to find parking, time to find a space on the beach, etc.  If it takes 20 minutes for the average beach user to get the the beach, then that is 40 minutes for the trip, which if that time is valued at the minimum wage, is worth about $7.  If reducing the public park space by 5-10% reduces public park use by 200 people per day for two summer months – the remaining beach is more crowded, so people do something else – then the cost is $84,000 per year.  In economics, we’d call this part of the opportunity cost of the project, and it should be counted as a cost against the benefits that the council politicians have spoken about.  This method of putting a number on the value of a public space is know as the Travel Cost Method (for more, visit http://www.ecosystemvaluation.org/).

Some of this cost will show up as revenue to the development – we’ve turned a public benefit into a private benefit that shows up as payment of the entrance fee to the new facility.  However, this changes something that people would use based on how long they were willing to wait to find a spot on the beach to something people use based on how much they are willing to pay.  Now something where access was unrelated to income – except in so far as people with higher income were more likely to stay away – has been changed to something where access is dependent on income.  The new facility is not the YM/YWCA, but a for profit enterprise, and admission fees will certainly reflect this.  So, while Penticton has technically not given or sold the public land, it has changed its nature so that low income people are essentially excluded.

Is this the right thing to do?  Will Penticton earn enough from this deal so that it is able to offer improved park space elsewhere that truly substitutes for what has been lost, or have they made all of Penticton a bit poorer because it looks better on the budget lines?

 photo Skaha20Beach205.jpg

Water Sustainability Plans – Compensation

On Wednesday last I had the occasion to give a presentation to a workshop “Advancing Watershed Sustainability” organized by the Fraser Basin Council (FBC) and the BC Wildlife Federation (BCWF).  During the first half of the day, several presentations described work that the FBC and BCWF were doing to support collaborative watershed governance.  In the afternoon, three presentations explored the scientific and policy environment that surrounds efforts to develop collaborative watershed governance.

I was asked to speak about water shortages, and given the conference theme, focused my short talk on the Water Sustainability Act (WSA) and the main option for a binding alternative to the provisions of the WSA, Water Sustainability Plans.

The Water Sustainability Act is really an act about managing water during shortages.  Much of the act is about who can have a licence, what the conditions are around those licences, penalties for violations of those conditions, etc.  However, the whole point of licences is that they are a means of allocating water between users, and in particular how those users will be prioritized when there is a water shortage.

PriorityLineDuring a shortage, the law of the land is an ‘attenuated FITFIR’.  All licences have a priority date, and excepting the attenuations, the most junior licence is the first one cut off if there is insufficient water to satisfy all licences.  The attenuations consist of ways that the government can put the environment first by requiring minimum stream flows to be considered, taking actions to protect the environment during times of shortage, and providing priority to basic human needs.  This attenuated FITFIR is the provincial water shortage management plan.

reality-checkWater Sustainability Plans provide an alternative.  Communities can get together and come up with a plan that they like better than the shortage management set out in the WSA.  There seems to be broad scope in the act for the types of water management that communities can choose to implement.  However, there are a couple of parts of the act that these communities must consider, with ‘must’ the word used in the act.

From the act:

Submission of proposed plan to minister

74.  (1) After a proposed water sustainability plan has been prepared, the responsible person may submit the proposed plan to the minister.

(2) If a proposed plan submitted to the minister under subsection (1) recommends a significant change in respect of a licence or a drilling authorization and the holder of the licence or drilling authorization has consented to the change, the proposed plan must be accompanied by

(a) a copy of the written consent of the holder of the licence or drilling authorization, and

(b) a detailed proposal assigning to each person or other entity who would benefit from implementation of the recommendation some or all of the responsibility for compensating the licensee or drilling authorization holder, consented to in writing by each such person.

(3) If a proposed plan submitted to the minister under subsection (1) recommends a significant change in respect of a licence or a drilling authorization and the holder of the licence or drilling authorization has not consented to the change, the proposed plan must be accompanied by

(a) a list of the affected licences and drilling authorizations,

(b) a statement of the public benefit from the significant change, and

(c) a statement of any available source of funding to pay compensation or for compensatory measures for the involuntary significant changes.

 

I think that this section is important.  If the plan impacts on existing licence holders, then either those licence holders need to agree to those impacts and accept the compensation – if any – set out in the plan, or the plan has to include provisions to compensate licence holders who don’t agree to the plan.  In essence, the WSA sets out conditions under which water licences can be expropriated as part of the implementation of a plan, and like expropriation of land, compensation for those whose licences are expropriated needs to be planned for.

What does this mean for Water Sustainability Plans?  I think it has two important implications.  First, it means that WSPs are not a cheap way to put restrictions on water licence holders that a community doesn’t like.  If a licence holder does not want to participate in a plan, then getting a plan implemented means providing the minister with a compelling case that there are resources available to adequately compensate such licence holders for the loss they will suffer.  Going to the minister with a strong popular mandate from the community is not going to be sufficient.  That popular mandate has to be accompanied by an ability to mobilize resources sufficient for the necessary compensation.

Does this mean that the WSA essentially delivers a Water Sustainability Plan process wrapped in a coffin?  I don’t think so.  Many efforts at collaborative watershed governance fail because those who are asked to give something up either refuse to participate or participate only to the extent of protecting their interests.  The provisions of the Water Sustainability Plan mean that these people need not worry that something will be imposed on them that makes them worse off.  This may create an opportunity for those who will suffer from less access to water to clearly and honestly describe these impacts, and for those who want something different to listen and look for ways to offset these impacts.

After I gave my presentation, some in the audience seemed quite disappointed with my ‘dose of reality’.  True collaborative watershed governance must involve everyone and address all their impacts.  Existing licence holders are part of the community, and need to sunrise-clipart-as5786be part of the collaboration.  I think that the compensation requirement in Water Sustainability Plans actually opens the door for true collaborative governance, where all interests are included and respected.  Lets hope …

The presentation is available here: Managing Water Shortages.

Water and Spirituality

Pierre-Simon,_marquis_de_Laplace_(1745-1827)_-_GuérinAs a general rule, I am quick to dismiss pretty much everything that has a supernatural
slant to it.  There is simply no evidence that anything supernatural exists – which I guess by the very definition of super natural, must be the case.  Like Laplace, when it comes to some supernatural realm having an impact on the material realm we occupy, “I have no need for that hypothesis.”

I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and have continued to follow the practices of this religion for much of my life.  I kept participating because I believed that the religious practice is valuable, independent of the truth of the beliefs themselves.  I greatly admire the discipline of those who practice Islam, where prayers are said five times every day.  I also developed some important friendships and had the chelmsfordblueopportunity to meet some very inspiring people through my continuing involvement with the Catholic Church.  However, I was very careful to say that I attended a Catholic church, and avoided saying I was Catholic or that I believed what the Catholic church taught.

I am writing this on Easter Monday, and on Friday I went to a Catholic Good Friday service, as I have done almost every year for nearly half a century.  For most of those years, the Good Friday service was a long, boring obligation that I attended out of a sense of duty.  However, in the last few years this service in particular has come to be a powerful emotional experience for me.  This has lead me to reflect on the role that religion and spirituality can have in the way we live our lives and the choices we make in relation to the environment we inhabit.

The Christian story can be seen as the story of the life and death of a man who put love of others ahead of all else, in particular ahead of himself.  Over the course of that life, this man attracted a large following, some of whom were attracted to his message of peace, love and forgiveness, and others who believed him to be the leader who would help the Jewish people expel their Roman rulers.  Eventually, the Roman sanctioned leaders of the Jewish people came to see this man as a threat to their power.  When they acted to remove this threat, this man’s followers, including his closest and supposedly most devoted friends, largely abandoned him to die, defeated, at the hands of the Roman soldiers.

What has surprised me is how in the last few years this story has come to resonate with me.  The story holds that Jesus was the son of God, that he performed a number of miracles, and that in the end he rose from the dead.  While these are the parts of the story that are the root of the argument between believers and non-believers, these parts are not what resonate with me.  What instead I have come to see in this story is some similarities to my own story, which also involves loss of my parents, challenges in my own relationships, rejection, abandonment, etc.  Listening to this story, participating in the rituals, has become a way for me to get in touch with my own feelings around the path that my life has followed, a path that has certainly deviated far from the promise and excitement of the dreams I had when younger.  Unexpectedly, I have developed a ‘relationship’ through which I can actually feel empathy for that man in the Christian story.

DSCF9079 Stories are powerful, and until experiencing this evolution of my own connection with the Christian story, I didn’t appreciate how powerful.  If I reflect on the experience of the first peoples in North America, I think I am developing a deeper understanding about the importance of recovering their stories.  I think that it is through being brought up as a Catholic and by continuing the practice that I have absorbed the Christian story to the extent that I am now able to relate to it on an emotional level.  It needed to be there, so that when my own lived experiences enabled me to connect with the story, it would be there.  I think that this may be true for the first peoples as well.  If their young people do not have an ongoing opportunity to hear their stories and participate in their rituals, then they won’t have those stories to connect with over the journey of their lives.  It won’t take long until the stories become no more than fairy tales, told as entertainment.

DSCF9056I also wonder if hearing these stories and participating in these traditions, stories and traditions that emerged in the places we live, can be a valuable part of connecting us to this place.  Those of us who are immigrants have brought with us our stories and traditions.  Those may have been valuable in helping us to thrive in the places we came from.  However, they may not be the best fit locally.  Maybe if we heard these locally rooted stories ourselves, on a regular basis, maybe we would be more connected to where we live.  Maybe then we would be emotionally tied to the health of our local ecosystems and be more willing to work to protect them.  This is consistent with emerging research showing how fostering environmental empathy can lead to an increase in willingness to change behavior.

Here in the arid Okanagan, the first peoples see water as being alive, as having a spirit (nice article).  How would our behavior in relation to this resource change if we felt its ‘pain’ as it was ‘imprisoned’ behind dams and fed ‘poisons’ that made it impossible for Water to nourish the beings that depend on her?  Would we be grateful to Water for the gifts of refreshment and, via irrigation and food production, nourishment we are enjoying.  Would we be sad for the sacrifices made by the other organisms who also rely on Water’s gifts, so that we can enjoy a greater share of those gifts?  If we had a relationship with Water, would we change our choices?

DSCF9046I have heard my colleague Jeannette Armstrong speak on a couple of occasions where she describes indigeneity being about connection to place, not about race.  I am beginning to wonder if that connection needs to be founded in stories and traditions that are rooted in this place.  The Peach Festival, the Wine Festival, etc. are great events that connect us with the landscape as we have modified it.  However, they don’t connect us to the natural environment as it would exist.  Maybe we need a festival around the blossoming of the arrow leaf balsam root and the saskatoon bush, natural heralds of the season here in the Okanagan.  Maybe we need to hear stories about the salmon,the sagebrush, and the ponderosa.  Maybe if we are more connected to these stories, we’ll feel a greater loss when these are lost, and we will be more willing to work to protect the natural Okanagan environment.

 

Note: I took the Okanagan photos on the hill south of campus in 2014, the subject of this post.  Development is proceeding …

Water Pricing – 90,000 voices and growing …

nestle pure life hrRecently I was asked to comment on the BC government’s water pricing proposals, in light of an online petition at sumofus.org (petition here).  They are gathering signatures expressing opposition to the new water pricing rules in BC, which would see water bottling operations and other industrial water users pay the same annual licence rental as domestic water users, $2.25 per thousand cubic meters.  The outrage is focused on Nestle, which operates a bottled water plant in Hope, bottling and exporting many millions of litres of water every year.  Before the new pricing rules were brought in, Nestle and other similar users of groundwater paid nothing, something that also raised the ire of many during the Water Act Modernization discussions.

Some Canadian provinces charge a higher water rental (or royalty) rate.  Saskatchewan charges more than $46 per thousand cubic meters for water taken from the South Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle rivers, Lake Diefenbaker, and Buffalo Pond.  The rent for water from other sources is slightly below $15 per thousand cubic meters.  Quebec charges $70 and Nova Scotia $140.  The remaining provinces don’t seem to charge anything comparable to an annual rental for water use.  So, while BC rates are clearly the lowest among those that do charge, BC does charge a rental rate for water licences.

So what should BC charge?  That is not an easy question to answer.  A quick look at the licence rental rates that BC has adopted shows a range of different use categories, each with its own application fee, minimum annual rent, and volume based annual rent.  Why so complicated?

logging_photo_10Water is not the only thing that BC collects a royalty for.  We also collect royalties on “trees and rocks”.  These too are complicated.  For trees, the royalty is called ‘stumpage’.  A quick look at the BC Ministry of Forest website reveals that stumpage rates are even more complex than water licence rentals.  To quote (http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hva/gas/):

Generally stumpage rates are determined through a complex appraisal of each stand or area of trees – defined as the ‘cutting authority area’ – that is planned to be harvested.

Turning to rocks, things are no better (Mineral Tax handbook).  Mines pay a combination of a Net Revenue tax and a Net Current Proceeds tax.  The former is based on profits and the latter on the value of sales.  The latter provides a minimum tax, provided that the mine is covering operating costs.  So, if you operate a mine, you won’t go bankrupt to pay your taxes.

nexen-dilly-creek-fullLooking into oil and gas provides a clear reasoning for these choices.  For oil and gas, royalty rates are specific to each well (Oil and Gas Royalty Handbook).  The government regularly reviews the performance of its royalty program, with results available to the public here.  The review document clearly states the goals of the government with respect to the royalty regime.

  • Values to the Crown are maximized: encourage resource development to the benefit of the Crown in terms of maximizing royalties and taxes
  • Equity: producers, large and small, are treated equally under the regime
  • Long-term investment: the royalty regime is aimed at long-term investment by industry
  • Administrative Ease: simple to administer and verify for government and industry.

The choice of water rates likely reflects aspects of these same principles, modified to reflect the fact that water has a far greater diversity of uses than most other resources, and the passionate connection that people have with water.

Royalties are like a rent – they are called a rent for water – and the province is the landlord.  For most resources, the top goal is to maximize the amount of rental revenue collected over the long term.  This means encouraging investment and activity in the industry.  To accomplish this, royalties typically are a share of the profits in excess of a normal rate of return on the amount invested.  Firms won’t invest if they don’t make at least a fair return, necessitating such an approach.

Water gets more complex because water users are not just a collection of companies interested in making a profit.  There are a large number of water users who do so at least in part just for basic human needs.  Some water is used for public purposes, ranging from keeping parks green to leaving it in streams for the fish.  Some is used by companies where the goal is earning a profit.  However, even among these, there are some activities we want to encourage more than others.  Add to this the very strong sentiment among many that water should not be treated like a commodity.  These facts together mean that the government had little choice but to develop a schedule of water rental rates that (1) varies across activities so as to encourage some more than others, and (2) doesn’t collect any more revenue than necessary to administer the act.

Do these prices reflect the true value of water?  That water is priced far below its value is a commonly heard sentiment.  What is the value of water?  This is a huge topic that I’ll return to some other time.  Suffice it to say that the value of water varies substantially over time and space.  Sometimes we are desperate for it, and would give up almost anything to get some.  At other times and in other places, we pay to get rid of it.  There is no way to come up with an administered price that reflects this heterogeneity.  The whole process by which water is managed, from the review of applications for a licence to enforcement in the case of violations is meant to work together to protect those things about our water resource that British Columbian’s value.  Is it perfect?  Far from it.  Is it better than what we had?  Yes.  Can the problems be fixed by adjusting the way water is priced?  No.

100755233So, finally, should Nestle and other companies seeking to make a profit using water pay more?  If we are modeling prices on the royalty, then yes, they should be returning to us, the owners, a share of their profit from using our water.  But do we apply this same logic to farms, family run campgrounds, etc.?  Water is complex, and managing it invariably forces us to consider a variety of things we value.  Simple solutions just don’t exist.

 

Addendum

Was a guest on the CBC Radio program BC Almanac on March 12, 2015.  A podcast here.

Local Issues: Curtis Road UBCO Access

There was one safe, convenient way to access the UBC Okanagan campus by bicycle from Kelowna.  As of today, February 16th, 2015, for most of us, there isn’t.  That route was along the private easement from the end of Curtis Road, along Robert Lake, to the west side of campus.

CurtisEasement

The issue of the rights to use the easement has been around since the campus was first created as part of Okanagan College.  A Google search can turn up many stories documenting the ongoing conflict between some of the residents along Curtis Road and  UBC.  While there are many versions of the story, the core seems to be that the north campus of Okanagan College was created by combining a number of parcels of land, one of which had rights to use an easement that lead to the end of Curtis Road.  At the time, this parcel seems to have been a hay field, so that access was only needed from time to time, at most daily in the summer for irrigation.  The traffic currently using the easement to access UBC – a substantial number of cyclists, some pedestrians – some of whom are dropped off at the start of the easement – and a few people who drive to the end of the easement and drop someone off – is far more than was ever envisioned for the easement.

An easement is an interesting arrangement.  In the case of Curtis Road, the easement provides each property owner with the right to cross the private property of her neighbours to access her land.  This extends to visitors as well.  When this agreement was made between the property owners, nobody envisioned an institution would arrive, and that that institution would result in a large increase in passage.  The protracted legal battle between some of the residents and UBC Okanagan seems to have finally clarified what rights UBC has, and that is passage by people traveling for work to those buildings built on the original parcel.  They cannot use the easement on days when they don’t have business in those buildings, nobody else accessing UBC can use it, and UBC must have an effective system in place to ensure that only those entitled to use the easement do.

This dispute highlights the challenge of balancing private property rights with the public interest.  Clear and secure private property rights are foundational to a smoothly functioning economy and liberal-democratic society.  The owners along Curtis Road have a clear and well defined set of rights in relation to their private property, and their rights to use the easement.  The court has effectively ensured that these rights are secure and can be enforced.  This is precisely what our system of legal rights and the institutions meant to support them are supposed to do.  However, this also means that people who choose – or have no choice – to cycle to campus now must take a longer and in some parts much more dangerous route to campus.  Has the enforcement of private property rights supported the public interest?

Economists as a rule see clear property rights and smoothly functioning markets as the best way to serve the public interest.  The expression of this idea dates back at least to Adam Smith (The Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Part IV, Chapter I, pp.184-5, para. 10.)

Every individual… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Our profession is loath to suggest interfering with the market unless there is strong evidence to indicate that property rights and a freely functioning market are not serving the public interest.  Rather, we would typically look for opportunities where small tweaks or ‘entrepreneurial’ solutions could be found that both satisfy the public interest and protect private rights.  Are there any such solutions for this problem?

One simple solution would be for the residents to charge a fee for using the easement.  Maybe $25 per month and $200 for the year.  The cheapest two semester parking pass at UBCO costs $252, and the cheapest annual pass is $378.  For a faculty or staff member, it may be worth spending $200 for such access.  And if 50 faculty and staff people do so, then the residents have $10,000 per year to decide what to do with.  Sounds simple and rational.  Is it likely?

Feelings have been hurt.  Some of the residents feel that their rights have not been respected, and that they have been bullied by UBC and ridiculed by self-righteous UBC staff and students.  For some, their share of this $10,000 may not be enough to make up for this history of hurt, or they may simply value their privacy more than their share of $10,000.  Adam Smith’s simple selfishly rational individuals may not adequately describe this situation, and a simple negotiated solution that permits access may not be possible.

Does this have anything to do with water, the usual subject of this blog?  The dilemma of the right mix of private property rights and free choice by individuals against collective control in the public interest is huge in water.  Economists – and I’ve been one of these at times – typically lament the lack of markets for water rights and the lost opportunities for more efficient water use as a result.  Many others insist that water must remain in the public realm.  Fundamentally, it is necessary for our survival and instrumental to environmental health, and opponents of markets for water rights feel something this important can’t be left to the whims of private owners.

As with so many societal choices, we need to reconcile multiple, conflicting values.  Hard choices are hard because there is no obvious right answer (great TED talk here).  We want to be part of a society that promotes active, healthy, safe and sustainable transportation options.  We also want to be part of a society that respects our individual freedom to make choices and to do with our property as we wish.  Here is a case where promoting one conflicts with the other.  The courts have clarified the legal situation.  The morally right choice though is far less obvious.

The Evolution of Water Rights

I had the opportunity to give a talk to the Lake Country Heritage and Cultural Society on Sunday the 15th of February.

Poster - Flowing Values - compAs the talk was not to a regular economics crowd, I thought I would try to make it interesting.  To do so, I spent some time learning about the history of water rights.

A few interesting facts emerged from my investigation.  First, written laws about water go back to the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia.  While there are not too many references, a couple of things were clear.  One was that ownership of water rested with the king/emperor/community.  A second was that if you didn’t take proper care of the irrigation works you were responsible for and someone else suffered a loss as a result, you had to compensate them.  There was little beyond this, and that seems to be because many conflicts around water were settled locally, by ‘customary law’.

Another couple of interesting points show up with the Romans.  They had prior appropriation – first in right, first in time – figured out.  However, they went a bit further.  Prior appropriation was the rule when a new source was developed.  Once the source was fully subscribed, then it switched to a proportional system.

Finally, it also turns out that the BC water act was amended many times between the date when it was first enacted, in 1909, and when it was replaced by the new Water Sustainability Act.  Some of those changes were pretty substantial.  So, while there are some new and innovative ideas in the Water Sustainability Act, it isn’t a updating of an act that hadn’t changed since 1909.  It brought forward many of the changes that had worked their way into the old Water Act over the century since it was introduced..  And like that act, it is likely that the Water Sustainability Act will itself be amended from time to time as some of its provisions prove inadequate to the issues we encounter.

The presentation can be downloaded here: (Lakecountry_Present_20150215).

 

What is the environment worth?

Oscar_Wilde_Price_Everything_Value_Nothing

When economists start talking about the value of the environment, some people like to miss-quote Oscar Wilde by saying “An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  Economists have certainly done their bit to justify this criticism.  However, if we spend less time trying to defend what we have discovered and more time trying to listen to people’s description of their relationship with the environment, maybe there would be less need for this cynicism.

Rio_Bartelmus_Figure3A doctoral student and I have a project underway right now that seeks to understand a bit more about the value people place on the goods and services provided by the environment here in the central Okanagan.  Our project is based on a couple of key ideas.  The first, it isn’t possible for people to have  everything they want.  The second is that the best way to understand the value people put on the environment is to ask them to choose the best balance between the different things that they might want.  It isn’t my job to tell people what the right balance is between the environment and other goals.  Rather, I have to listen to what people tell me the right balance is.

3764033114456556453Our way of asking people to tell us the right balance is with a survey.  The core of this survey is a collection of possible futures.  The differences between these futures are described using levels of a few important measures of environmental health.  These measures include the amount of groundwater pumping, health of the Kokanee population, area of natural habitat lost, and how well protected rural areas are.  Each of the futures presented in the survey have different improvements in these environmental measures, relative to a future we think is likely if nothing new is done to protect the environment.  Each of these futures also has a cost to which every household will have to contribute.  Each person who completes our survey will be asked to make a number of comparisons.  Each of these comparisons will offer the expected future with no new policies and two futures that have different environmental improvements and that cost.

The comparison might be like the table below.  Each survey offers several combinations like this.  The combinations will have different possible futures, where the environmental measures and the household cost changes.  For each of these combinations, we want to know which you like best, in consideration of the cost.

Environmental
Measure
Expected
Future
Possible
Future #1
Possible
Future #2
Groundwater Use up 20% up 10% up 20%
Kokanee Returns No change up 20% up 10%
Natural Habitats down 20% down 10% down 10%
Rural Population up 20% up 10% no change
Household Cost none $50 / year $100 / year

survey2you thinkOne big challenge with surveys like this is that people with strong opinions are most likely to participate.  If you care a lot about the environment, then you will want to express that by completing the survey and choosing the futures with the best environmental health, regardless of the cost.  If you care a lot about your household budget, then you will want to complete the survey and for every option choose the expected future with no increase in household cost.  Most people probably fall somewhere between these extremes, caring about the environment and about their household costs.  We want to hear from a broad group of people that does a good job of reflecting the diversity of the Central Okanagan.

We see the best chance of getting a broad and representative coverage of perspectives in the Central Okanagan coming from a random sample.  We collected as many address as we could from online directories (canada441.ca, 411.ca, whitepages.ca), and then sent invitation letters to several thousand addresses randomly chosen from this collection.  If goodnewsyou have one of these letters, it directs you to a website, and gives you information needed to access the survey.  The survey is not short, needing about half an hour to complete.  As thanks, we will be drawing five prizes of $250 that will be awarded to five people from our sample who let us know they want to be part of this draw.

If you have received one of our invitation letters, completing the survey will definitely make a valuable contribution to one Ph.D. student’s studies.  We also hope that it will provide some insights that will help our current and future leaders find that right balance between development and environmental protection.

new-picture-31If you didn’t receive a letter in the mail, don’t despair!  We would still like to hear your thoughts.  You can access a slightly different version of the survey by clicking the button.

click-here

Developing Academy Way Hill

WARNING: LONG!

When it comes to the environment we interact with on a daily basis, local government makes most of the important decisions.  I was reminded of this again recently when a notice for a public meeting about a rezoning proposal arrived in the mail.  Federal and provincial governments set some rules.  However, within the bounds of those rules, and sometimes in spite of those rules, local government decides how land will be used, and those land use decisions affect the environment that we interact with most often.

AcademyWayHillOrthoAcademy Way heads south from the current end of John Hindle Drive, on the south side of the UBC Okanagan campus.  Right now Academy Way provides access to Aberdeen Hall Preparatory School (www.aberdeenhall.com), an exclusive private school.  Most of the remainder of the hill south of campus and Aberdeen Hall is largely undeveloped.  For many years there has been a small herd of cattle ranging over the hill.  However, this hill has long been within the long term growth plan for the city, and recently the owner and the city have negotiated a zoning change to adjust property boundaries in preparation for developing the hill.

AcademyWayHill2

The results of the boundary adjustment are shown in the map above.  Prior to the adjustment, there was one large rectangular parcel, the top left corner coinciding with the corner in the permanent growth boundary.  The bottom right corner was just below and right of the small blue colored patch, an area designated as a future school.

The deal between the city and the land owner included the land owner ‘gifting’ to the city for park purposes a ravine on the western side of the property, and some steep hillside along the northwest of the parcel, and some other steep or otherwise unusable (e.g. a pipeline right of way) lands.  That the ravine will be part of the city parkland is certainly a good thing.  It is a nice spot.  However, it isn’t really much of a gift, as there would not be any profit in developing it anyhow.

I also recently received an email inviting me to participate in a survey about what makes strong neighbourhoods.  Great cities have strong neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods where people feel a connection to their place, and have relationships with their neighbours.  As I look around and watch development taking place in areas I am familiar with, I have come to wonder how much the shape of our development contributes to that sense of place?  Do we need to have a boundary to feel a sense of place?  When we live in a village, the village has a clear edge.  I wonder if strong neighbourhoods need boundaries?  In particular, what do the hills around Kelowna contribute? I see houses sprouting up on tops of hills, and to me this reduces my sense of place.  Whenever I look at the hills and see houses on top of them, I am visually reminded that the city continues over the hill and down the other side.  I know that a few houses on the hill doesn’t really change much about the city, but it does impact on the way I feel.  Is this just me, like so many other migrants to Kelowna, lamenting that things continue to change after I move here, or is there more to it than that?  I would love to know what urban planners, geographers and others who know more about what makes people feel a sense of place know about these issues.

I began to formulate an argument to justify protecting the hilltop.  My argument boiled down to justifying economically the value of protecting a twenty meter wide strip of land along the high point of the hill.  For my argument to work, I needed to show that the cost of protecting this strip of land is less than the benefits from this protection.

Costs:

The length of the hill is a bit under one kilometer, so a 20 meter wide strip would be getting close to 20,000 square meters, or towards two hectares.  A quarter acre lot is about 1,000 square meters, which means maybe 20 lots would be lost to development.  Taking account of the fact that these lots would have a view, they should be compared to other vacant lots nearby.  589 Harrogate Lane (0.2 acres), on Dillworth Mountain, is listed at $259,900.  2005 Capistrano Drive (0.259 acres), on Quail’s Ridge, is listed for $239,900.  These lots have road access, and services to the edge of the lot.  Costs have not yet been paid to put these in on Academy Way Hill.

Based on a study by Canada Mortgage and Housing, (http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/publications/en/rh-pr/socio/socio026.pdf), the infrastructure ’emplacement’ cost for a conventional subdivision – similar lot sizes to those used above – is almost $35,000 per lot and a life cycle cost of a bit over $125,000 per lot.  This is for a subdivision near Ottawa.  Within Kelowna, the city charges a development cost charge of a bit over $20,000 per lot in this area, and Glenmore Ellison Irrigation District levies its own charges.  Development cost charges are levied to offset the impact of new development on existing city infrastructure off the site.  So, the developer is looking at costs likely approaching $60,000 per lot.  Including an assortment of ‘soft’ charges, from marketing through engineering and legal fees, the total cost per lot is probably around $100,000 (with quite a range for ‘around’).  The land also has to be bought by the developer, as the current owner stated at the public meeting that his plans are to sell.  What is the land worth?  19.5 acres at 749 Highpointe Drive is currently listed for three million, and there is a claimed development potential of 38 lots.  This is a bit under $80,000 per lot.

So, we could estimate $250,000 as a reasonable sales price for each of 20 lots that would be lost.  Take off $100,000 in development related charges and $80,000 to buy the land, and the developer would be left with a profit of about $70,000 per lot, or $70/$180 = %38.9 percent profit.  This is realized over a number of years, so not quite as great as it first appears.

So, these are a whole lot of calculations done to guess the profit from developing the land.  However, the land has not been developed, and based on a reasonably comparable property, it is probably worth no more than $80,000 per lot in its present form.  It is likely worth less, as it isn’t as well connected to existing city infrastructure and is further away.  Pure speculation on my part says choose a number of about $60,000 as the per lot sales value of the property, and thus the loss to the owner if twenty lots could not be sold is $1.2 million.  The cost, therefore, of setting this land aside might be as high as $1.2 million.

Now, this $1.2 million is a one time cost.  We can translate this into an annual cost by imagining that the owner could invest the money.  If the money can be invested at 5%, then the return would be $60,000 per year.  To be worth setting aside, the benefits of protecting this land has to be at least $60,000 per year.

Benefits:

Now what about the benefits?  A little bit more natural habitat.  Has value, but hard to measure.  Visually more appealing than a row of houses along the crest of the hill.  Has value, but hard to measure.  How about the value of a trail along the height of land?

To get a value for the trail, we need a value to represent the enjoyment that someone gets from using the trail.  It is pretty hard to put a dollar value on an emotion, but we can indirectly do it by considering the cost of accessing the trail.  For that, consider the alternatives.  The trails north of the university or the Mission Creek Greenway would seem to be the closest alternative, although for a trail with a view, one would have to go to Knox Mountain.  Travelling from the future Academy Hill neighbourhood to the university, parking, and then returning is a few minutes in a vehicle each way and parking cost.  Mission Creek Greenway is a bit further, but no parking cost.  Knox similarly has no parking cost, but is even further away.  If this trail is built, we could also expect people from elsewhere in Kelowna to come and enjoy it.  The Greenway is about 8 km away, and Knox is about 10 km.  Going both ways, and using the UBC mileage rate of $0.49 per km that is paid when we use our personal vehicles for work, leads to a transportation cost of $8 to $10.  This does not include anything for the value of the time spent traveling that could be used for other things.  So, a walk on this proposed trail can be said to have a value of at least $8, and for simplicity, say $10.  Anyone from the new neighbourhood that uses this trail is able to do so for free, rather than incurring a cost of about $10 to go somewhere else for a similar experience.

Benefits vs Costs

We need to get $60,000 in benefits every year to justify this trail.  If each use of the trail is worth $10, then we need 6,000 visits per year.  There are 365 days in a year, so that works out to just over 16 visit per day.  We don’t have to have a very intense use rate to make this trail idea economic.  By comparison, the Mission Creek Greenway sees over 1,000 people per day (RDCO).

The Final Chapter

I attended a public meeting about some boundary adjustments related to the rezoning of the hill.  The meeting focused on some small changes around the edge that were not precisely consistent with the Official Community Plan (OCP).  The main boundary changes had been completed months earlier, with most of those following lines drawn as part of the OCP process.  This fact left me wondering if we are using the OCP in the right way.  I have attended meetings and given input during public consultations around the OCP.  These consultations deal with high level concepts – do we want sprawl or tight town clusters, etc.  Most of the feedback relates to these broad concepts.  However, it is translated into precisely drawn lines on a map, and zoning changes are then made with no further opportunity for public input.  Is this right, or should the OCP be drawn with ‘fuzzy’ lines, and when the need arises to put in the details, further consultation be undertaken?

At the meeting, I struggled to figure out how best to speak to the issue.  I could stand up and argue that this new parkland was not really a gift, as it was not profitable to develop anyhow.  If anything the owner had dumped a chunk of useless land onto the city, which might mean that the city is now liable for providing fire risk reduction and other such services to this park, and thereby actually increasing the value of the land that can be developed.

I chose instead to simply describe the idea of adding a hilltop trail and suggest that it would be a valuable addition to the other parkland that had been transferred to the city.  My naive hope was that there was some scope for the city and the landowner to work together to implement something like my suggestion.  However, the owner made it very clear that in his opinion, he had given a lot to the city already, and wasn’t giving any more.  Unfortunate, but I don’t imagine I would be eager to give up a million dollars either.  I guess this means that any hope for adding a couple of hectares, out of likely around 50 hectares of developable land, rests with the willingness of the future developer to work with the city.

There are developers in our community who care very much about the legacy they leave behind with the projects the build.  I hope that when development proceeds on this hill, such a developer is in charge.