We’ve recently sent two letters to Land, Water and Resource Stewardship Minister Randene Neill on your behalf. They are copied below. The first relates to the disposal of Styrofoam. Dock owners are required to remove old Styrofoam floats, but there’s no facility for proper disposal. The second about serious concerns with the wording of paragraphs 1.12 and 8.1(g) that lets government cancel 20-year Licences of Occupation with 90 days’ notice—without any requirement to act reasonably. After years of challenges, the least we should expect is fair and reasonable treatment. We will keep pressing the government for clarity and accountability.
Box 15, Madeira Park, BC V0N 2H0
August 15, 2025
To: The Honourable Randene Neill
Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, British Columbia
Dear Minister,
The people of Pender Harbour, and coastal communities across your constituency, take the protection of our marine environment seriously. That is why, when the Dock Management Plan banned the use of unencapsulated foam for floatation, we supported the decision despite the cost and effort involved in replacing it.
However, the Province has overlooked a critical part of the solution: there is no practical, affordable, or accessible way to dispose of the old foam. Without a coordinated disposal program, this environmentally harmful material is sitting in yards, sheds, and shorelines — or worse, breaking apart into our waters.
Currently, the only disposal option is to hire a private company to “deal with it,” which is often prohibitively expensive. The process requires placing the foam in a container, shipping it to Vancouver, sending it to a sorting and cleaning facility, and then processing it. Recently, removing a single burnt float in Pender Harbour was quoted at $10,000. With an estimated 70% of floats in Pender Harbour using this type of floatation, the scale — and cost — of disposal is staggering.
Without an affordable disposal pathway, many owners simply cannot comply. This risks large volumes of unencapsulated foam being abandoned, dumped, or left to deteriorate, creating the very environmental harm the Dock Management Plan was intended to prevent.
We urge the Province to act immediately by establishing a regional foam collection and recycling program, with costs shared or subsidized to ensure compliance. This could be as simple as setting up designated drop-off points where the foam can be properly handled, processed, and shipped to appropriate facilities.
Without this final step, the ban on unencapsulated foam risks becoming an empty policy — well-intentioned but
ineffective — while the problem literally crumbles into our waterways.
We ask for your leadership to ensure that the Dock Management Plan’s environmental goals are not undermined by a lack of disposal solutions.
Sincerely,
The Board
Pender Harbour and Area Residents Assn.
Board@PHARA.ca
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Box 15, Madeira Park, BC V0N 2H0
August 15, 2025
The Honourable Randene Neill
Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, British Columbia
Re: Dock Authorizations and the Cancelling Clause
Dear Minister Neill:
We are writing to express our serious concern with the terms in the government’s recently announced authorization process for certain existing docks.
The standard Licence of Occupation language currently issued by your ministry grants the government the right to cancel authorizations on 90 days’ notice, at its “sole discretion” and with “no requirement… to act reasonably” (see paragraphs 1.12 and 8.1(g)).
This is deeply troubling. Such unrestricted authority creates unnecessary uncertainty for dock owners and undermines confidence in the authorization process. We urge you to amend these terms so that any cancellation rights are subject to the very modest — but essential — principle that government must act reasonably.
We believe this small change would protect both the public interest and the fairness that citizens have a right to expect from government decision-making.
Sincerely,
The Board
Pender Harbour and Area Residents Assn.
Board@PHARA.ca
