SPORTS: Houston Drags this weekend!
SPORTS: U-14 provincial play
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Wednesday, July 17, 2013
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Official plan By Jackie Lieuwen Houston Today
Downtown Cleanup
Photo submitted
A group of volunteers from the Houston ACT Committee, a preventative health committee funded by Northern Health, cleaned up an empty downtown site at Poulton and 10th Street last week Wednesday. Volunteers are planning to meet at the same site tomorrow night, Thursday, at 7 p.m. and welcome anyone interested to help. See the Facebook page called “This is our town” for more.
Houston council has hired community planner to look at zoning and land-use and regulations to guide future development. John Guenther, Interim Planner, says the goal is to plan and draft bylaws that will guide council in implementing their Official Community Plan (OCP). “I’m looking forward to starting this process,” said Mayor Bill Holmberg. Guenther is an independent consultant who has worked on OCPs in Revelstoke, Chelan County Washington, Surprise Arizona, and North Vancouver. He says council will discuss things such as commercial, residential and mixed zoning, enhancing spaces with landscaping, creating inviting spaces and walking/biking corridors. Guenther is looking at developing plans for parks, trails, recre-
ation, land-use, housing, infrastructure and public safety. Over the summer, council will work with Guenther to review and define their OCP land use goals, policies and implementation and they will define and refine needs for zoning and subdivision. Some of the discussion topics include regulations on chickens, c-can containers, mobile homes and secondary suites. Council will hold public meetings throughout the summer to get public input about the community plan, land-use and zoning, protecting sensitive areas and creating inviting public and private spaces. The first public meeting is an open house July 25 at 7 p.m. at the council chambers. They will have a dot exercise and open ended questions from the public. Feedback can also be given via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jjguent.
Sockeye fishery on Skeena River unlikely in 2013 By Shaun Thomas Black Press
Commercial fishermen on the North Coast were dealt another blow this week with word that the 2013 Skeena River sockeye season is anything but a certainty. “Right now all
indications are there is unlikely to be a commercial fishery this year ... our preliminary forecast is the return is between 600,000 and 800,000 and we do not open the commercial fishery until there are at lease 1,050,000 sockeye so our thought is that there will not be a
commercial fishery this year,” said Mel Kotyk, North Coast area director with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who noted the situation could change. “We monitor the returns on a daily basis, and if that number does
bump up the fishery would open ... it will probably be another week or two until the majority of the fish return.” If the return was strong enough, the Skeena River sockeye fishery would open on July 12. Although that deadline may not be met, Joy
Thorkelson of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union said there is still an opportunity fishermen can benefit from the run. “Hope is not lost. It is not too late for the Skeena ... last year the fish arrived 10 days early. If the sockeye were 10 days
late this year we could still have a good fishery,” she said. “The DFO predicted it would be a bad year and, unfortunately, that seems to be accurate.” Returns on the Nass River, meanwhile, is more than double the expected return. However, the fishery
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will be closing for two weeks on July 12 to allow a weak stock to pass through the system. “The hope was that the Nass would close on July 12 and the Skeena would open on July 12 ... but my guess is the Skeena won’t open on July 12,” said Thorkelson.
Many models at
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