Saanich has recently launched a project to rethink the Shelbourne corridor, or at least the section from the Victoria border to Feltham Rd. in Gordon Head. The project is partial update to the venerable Shelbourne Local Area Plan, last changed in 1997. To kick off the whole thing off, Saanich held an open house to [...]
Posts under ‘Environment’
The future of Oak Bay allotment gardens
Oak Bay’s allotment gardens are expanding. With the recent clearing of the land on the south side of Bowker Creek, space was created for a dozen new garden plots. Given the expansion, Oak Bay Parks and Rec thought it would be a good time to talk about the future of the allotment gardens with many [...]
Alternative fuel cars redux: burning what you should eat
GDS Digital, who have a great set of interesting infographics on Flickr, have done this wonderful one on grain use: eating vs biofuel.
Image is licensed Creative Commons By Attribution. Hattip to Urban Cartography.
Uplands sewage to get more study
In the latest round of this saga, Council had received a note from Bill Cochrane, the Chief Administrative Officer of Oak Bay, rehashing history and offering a few new points. They eventually opted to follow Cochrane’s recommendation that Oak Bay Engineering prepare a literature review of all the various plans in the past decade, to [...]
Quick note from the Bowker Creek forum
The Bowker Creek Initiative held an open house on Saturday to unveil their 100-year plan (PDF, 6.5mb) to the public and collect comments on it. They setup in an empty storefront in Hillside Mall, maximizing accidental discovery of the event and thus more feedback. Going to where people already are is a great way to [...]
Pesticides and your lawn
As Oak Bay debates the merits of a cosmetic pesticide ban, the recent Victoria premiere of A Chemical Reaction could not have come at a better time. The film charts the course of pesticide bans across Canada, from tiny Hudson, Quebec to full province-wide bans in Ontario and Quebec. It is a US-focused film, so [...]
Oak Bay Council debates Uplands sewage again tomorrow night
The latest round of debate about the Uplands Sewage Separation project will happen during tomorrow night’s council meeting (PDF). This is the last meeting that Council can decide to move forward with the low-pressure system to respond to the federal and provincial funding deadline of Jan. 29th. The directors of the Oak Bay Community Association [...]
Globe and Mail: electric cars will not save the world
The Globe and Mail had an excellent article yesterday about a panelist at the Detroit Auto Show daring to go against the conventional wisdom and point out that electric cars will not save the world. Nor will cars running on hydrogen, hybrids or even recycled bovine flatulence. Why not? Cars causes many ills for society, [...]
Further thoughts from the Uplands sewage meeting
As I (and others) have reported, Oak Bay Council ultimately rejected the low-pressure gravity system, but unlike the Oak Bay News and Times Colonist inferred, many of the councillors didn’t so much reject the low-pressure system as defer the question until further consultation with the residents, both in and out of the Uplands, could be [...]
Jeff Rubin on peak oil
Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC, has a great speech about the realities of high oil prices in the next few years:
