PORT Metro Vancouver has an immediate opportunity to show it can be a good neighbour and perhaps win back some goodwill from a neighbourhood in the City of North Vancouver that is otherwise spoiling for a fight with the local bully boy.
The port's executive is expected to decide today whether or not to stick with a plan to route high-voltage transmission wires down St. Davids Avenue to service a grain terminal.
Moodyville residents are the one most impacted by the port's rail expansion and the subsequent rerouting of the Low Level Road. They are the ones who will deal with protracted construction and the noise from a busy road that will move much closer to where they live.
City of North Vancouver council reluctantly signed off on the road plan in June of 2012 in the face of a deadline that would otherwise have seen federal funding disappear.
Only two months later, Richardson International made public plans to expand its grain silo capacity. Moodyville residents were justifiably outraged that no mention of this view-blocking, dust-creating plan had been mentioned during the two years the Low Level Road plans had been in front of the public.
As far as we know, the port has yet to approve Richardson's expansion, yet it had already approved BC Hydro running new high-voltage electricity lines through Moodyville without telling anyone.
Only after a lot of anger was publicly expressed did the port belatedly agree to look at an alternate routing along its own lands. We hope it takes this opportunity to do the right thing.
