By Madeline Baker, Times-Chronicle
A proposed 60-slip strata marina at 8000 Cottonwood Drive in Osoyoos has locals struggling to see eye-to-eye with project designers about how comfortably 60 new watercraft can co-exist with other forms of recreation at Osoyoos Lake.
Opinions clashed at the March 29 public hearing about the project and its preliminary bylaw amendment, with members of the community and council members alike voicing their safety concerns related to the potential marina’s placement and size.
“The north end of the lake has gotten more congested over the years,” said Chris Scheuren in an e-mail to council. “At peak season one can taste the gasoline in the water.”
Gary McAllinden shared even stronger words about the marina’s potential impact on swimmers in his e-mail: “The thought of having 60 additional boats, let alone jet skis … next to [a public] park with kids swimming in the water sounds like a catastrophe waiting to happen.”
Kayakers and paddleboarders also voiced worries about their continued safety with an increase in motorized vehicles at the north end of Osoyoos Lake.
“The lake is very shallow at this point and to accommodate the 60 slips, [docks] would have to extend out into the lake resulting in loss of use for kayakers, paddle boarders and swimmers,” said Ed Ferriera. “This council has to think about how many more slips this lake can take.”
Project applicant Josh Hall, Trademark construction’s Tom Hedquist, and Osoyoos Director of Planning and Development Gina MacKay were present to answer questions and offer reassurance, but agreement was still in short supply.
Hall agreed that they must put a high priority on swimmers and boats having enough room to avoid direct interaction between the beach and boat docks, and that they plan to achieve that goal by paying for the installation of municipal swim grids.
Another safety measure was suggested by Hedquist: “You can create some traffic areas for boating … to push people toward the north [so that] they don’t even enter into that public area. It’s very common to have those swimming areas defined so that boaters don’t go into them.”
But Wayne Fedun, a neighbour to the proposed development who spoke to council via Zoom, felt that his own experiences as a resident of Luna Rosa could shed some light on the likelihood of their plans working the way they hoped.
According to Fedun, the combination of a 1:1 unit-to-slip ratio on such a small foreshore area would likely leave the beach too cramped and the view too cluttered with “rows and rows of boats” for most residents to enjoy it at all.
He argued that this would lead to overcrowding of the two beaches adjacent to the property along with the issues others had already mentioned, such as the docks’ protrusion into a space often used by non-motorized watercraft, which made the projected size of the marina hard to defend.
Even when Hall provided the likely parameters of their planned swim area, those being 120 feet of beach space extending 30 meters into the lake, Councillors Myers Bennett and CJ Rhodes agreed with Fedun’s opinion that the marina would make the beach too unappealing to be worthwhile.
Ultimately, members of town council were unconvinced about the wisdom of providing so many boat slips in that particular area of the lake, but they did not see their uncertainty as grounds to reject a third reading of the zoning bylaw amendment outright.
Bennett along with Mayor Sue McKortoff, voted against the amendment with Bennett particularly opposed to both the number of slips and how far the dock would extend out into the water.
Council’s approval means that, if the amendment passes in its current form, council will have no grounds to object should the provincial government approve a 60-slip marina.
However, council can still choose to rescind their third reading if they decide to add a further amendment that limits the acceptable size for any marina built within that zone.
