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richmondreview.com Wednesday, October 24, 2012
28 PAGEs
Council steps up pipeline protest City renews opposition on day of action against pair of pipelines by Matthew Hoekstra Staff Reporter
Noriki Tamura shows off Japadog’s most popular menu item, the Terimayo, in Richmond last year.
Matthew Hoekstra photo
City to open streets to food vendors Vendors invited to submit bids to city after pilot project finally gets underway by Matthew Hoekstra Staff Reporter Sidewalk vendors could be serving up food in downtown Richmond by next May. On Thursday the city issued a request for expressions of interest for sidewalk vending services at Westminster Highway and No. 3 Road. As a pilot project, city hall is opening
up three corners of the busy intersection to food vendors and other sidewalk retailers. The city will select up to three vendors in total for the project, expected to begin May 1, 2013, according to the proposal document. The city isn’t charging vendors for the space, noting they have the ability to “contribute to the vibrancy of the city’s downtown core.” Vendors face some restrictions. They can’t cause congestion or block pedestrian traffic, nor can they produce “offensive odours.” And any would-be vendor must offer goods and services that don’t directly compete with nearby businesses. For food vendors, the city says menus must offer food that’s “healthy and
grown locally” and packaged with environmentally-friendly materials. The request for proposal comes over one year after city council first approved the pilot project. On June 27, 2011, civic politicians ordered staff to explore street-side retail at the intersection, which is located steps from the Richmond-Brighouse Station. Under an existing bylaw, food vendors are not permitted to operate on city property, with the exception of moving ice cream trucks. But some mobile food vendors have operated in Richmond in recent years on property not owned by the city, including Japadog, which operates a hotdog stand near Vancouver International Airport’s parkade.
A banner the length of an oil tanker, unfurled by protesters in Victoria Monday, also symbolized jet fuel tankers that could soon travel up the Fraser River, said a Richmond councillor. “What all those people don’t realize is that tankers of that same size—Panamax supertankers—are planning to come up the Fraser River, which is much more dangerous water even than the waters up north,” said Coun. Harold Steves. At a council meeting Monday, civic politicians stepped up their opposition to the Vancouver Airport Fuel Facilities Corporation’s proposal to ship jet fuel to Riverport and pump it to the airport via a new pipeline. Council passed a motion demanding a meeting with B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake to find an alternative— such as making better use of an existing pipeline that fuels the airport. Monday was also a day of action on the B.C. legislature lawn, as over 2,000 people protested two other pipeline projects: Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline from northern Alberta to Kitimat, and a pending application by Kinder Morgan to twin its oil pipeline that carries Alberta oil to Burnaby and Washington state. The airport’s pipeline proposal is still under a B.C. Environmental Assessment Office review.
Steves called the harmonized federal-provincial review process “totally anti-democratic,” as no public hearing on the proposal is scheduled. “We need to challenge this to the fullest of our ability,” said Steves. “I really don’t understand who gave the authority to a group of private companies to overrule the City of Richmond, Metro Vancouver and the Agricultural Land Reserve in terms of putting a pipeline in.” Steves also questioned why Port Metro Vancouver is “judge and jury” on whether jet fuel tankers should travel the river. The airport pipeline is getting “third billing” to other proposals, said Mayor Malcolm Brodie, but he said it’s just as important. “We don’t want those tankers on the river, and we don’t want the rest of what this whole proposal entails.” At Monday’s meeting Brodie also announced a council resolution made behind closed doors—calling on federal Transport Minister Denis Lebel to “formally intervene” to stop the port from using the Agricultural Land Reserve for port expansion. Council members have been leery of the port’s expansion plans since its purchase of the 81-hectare (200-acre) Gilmore Farm in East Richmond in 2009. Port CEO Robin Silvester has said his first priority “is to get the most out of the facilities that we have without requiring any more land.”
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