City of Powell River’s barge terminal will soon be moving to property on Catalyst Paper Corporation’s mill site.
Stan Westby, the city’s chief administrative officer, said the city has successfully negotiated a three-month lease with Catalyst, which is renewable for another three months. The barge terminal has to be relocated in order for the city to complete work on the south harbour breakwater. Truck traffic hauling material from the new location will travel through the mill property and out to Ash Street in Townsite.
Westby said at first the city was looking at using Catalyst’s deep sea port as a contingency for relocating the barge terminal. “That was not workable,” he said. “There were a number of reasons why and it was discarded.”
After looking at other options, the city settled on the current location. It had to have approval from the provincial Integrated Land Management Bureau and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to construct a ramp. “To do that we had to give them some assurances on other remedial work that we were doing,” Westby said. “We made some minor commitments which we will keep on remediation on the bank at the new site.”
After the lease expires, the city will be looking at its options, Westby said. “It’s actually a fairly heavy-duty type of facility, so maybe there will be opportunities to have it for a longer term,” he said.
The ramp at the Westview site may have some value to the city, Westby added. “The property itself definitely has value and council hasn’t had that discussion, hasn’t had that public consultation and engagement on it,” he said. “I think it’ll definitely be something that’ll work with an integrated waterfront plan for the community.”
The barge terminal will be operational at its new location as soon as a flotation facility to support the ramp is finished, he said. City Transfer Ltd., which has a contract to operate the Westview barge terminal, is building the ramp.
Craig Long, City Transfer president, said his company will be a user of the facility when it is operating in its new location, along with everyone else. “We just happen to be the people constructing it for them,” he said.
Long said at this point it’s not known if City Transfer will have a contract to operate the facility in its new location. “It’s really quite up in the air with everything, because everything is moving so quickly with the waterfront,” he said. “The only thing that I established is that we want to pay public rates like everyone else and we want to be general users like everyone else.”
