against Port Expansion

I am sure you have all heard the phrase " Death by a thousand cuts". Well, that is what the expansion of the Port personifies to our community, river, ocean, and all those support.

The proposed expansion will be a death knell for our already endangered salmon populations and all the other species of fish in the Fraser River. The eulachon species already on the endangered list have, this spring, been seen catching and eating it:s own species ( a likely sign of a shortage of food). The Fraser River is becoming too industrialized and the river's life-sustaining ability is being endangered. The expansion of the Port by buildingT2 may very well push it over the edge.

There Port continually speaks of restoration and remediation. There is NO REMEDIATION  OF A DEAD RIVER!

WE all know what happened to the oyster beds that abounded in and around Tsawwassen ...they are gone forever!  The port cannot bring them back. The sandpipers feed on the rich biofilm to fatten for their migration to their nesting grounds in the north. That is Not something you can pick up and move as it requires the flow of nutrients from the river and specific currents and warmth to flourish. You can not pick up biofilm and move it and expect it to flourish.

Adding disturbance and disruption on the river you must also consider the disruption to the land surrounding the Port. We are already seeing the damage all the lights have on the migration of birds. We have A Ramsar site, the Reifel Waterfowl Park just a short distance from the Port. The expansion of the Port will surely have a deleterious effect on the thousands of birds feeding, nesting, and migrating through that Park.

The damage to the human population of this ever-growing area will be impacted as well. First by trucks hauling the thousands and thousands of truckloads of material, the dredging of fish-bearing sites in the Strait, the noise of construction, and increased traffic to service the Port should it be built, and all that burnt fossil fuel. Our roads are already overloaded and more trucks will mean more roadwork and more valuable farmland being lost. The current  COVID  pandemic should bring home to everyone the importance of preserving our precious farmland. We cannot and SHOULD NOT rely on our food to be shipped across the ocean. Really it is utterly foolish to harvest food here and ship it across the ocean to be processed and then shipped back to us. Where is the economy or sense in that? What a waste of fuel, what a horrid lot of pollution, what a degradation of our environment, just so a Port can make money!

I pity the Tsawassen First Nations who live on the shore facing the Port, They already have their lives disrupted by lights, noise, dirt blowing onto and into their homes, and their ability to harvest traditional fish, crabs, and wildfowl because of the current Port facility. An enlarged port will further exacerbate their problems.

There is also the problem of many ships anchoring among the islands dragging anchors over the seabed destroying the fish environment while spewing their smokestacks into the air. I have heard reports of them losing anchor in stormy weather (which we know is happening more often with climate change) and drifting close to Islander docks and homes. We do not need MORE ships anchoring there .

FREMP was removed and the Port Authority has been given almost unheard of leeway in its actions. So much so, that reports by eminent scientists studying the compounding of effects of expansion have had their reports hidden or extracted from these reports . Shame!