Leave Comment
Background Information Regarding the Golf Course
In order to understand the entire golf course fiasco, one must travel back in time to the mid-1990's and gather up the pieces of the complex puzzle. As you see the pieces starting to fit together, the big picture will come into view, and you'll likely conclude, as we have, that this is an incredibly fascinating story! You may start to believe, like many coalition members, that this could well be the golf course that never was.
Why Build a Golf Course on a Mountain?
The Okanagan Valley is blessed with mild winters and hot, dry summers. The valley bottom (elevation - 400 metres or 1320 feet) is dotted with golf courses, and there are over 20 courses within an hour's drive of Vernon. A wide variety of golf courses are available, ranging from the incredibly inexpensive 9-hole Lumby Golf Course ($5 for 18 holes) to world class golf courses (and very expensive at $135 for 18 holes) like Predator Ridge. The golfing season can start as early as March or April, and often runs into November (about 8 months). Temperatures are normally mild, sunshine plentiful, and in the heat of the summer, golfers often prefer to golf early in the morning or in the evening, when temperatures are more tolerable. Hot afternoons are better spent sailing, waterskiing, or swimming at Kal Beach.
At Silver Star Mountain, things are very different. The area around Silver Star's proposed golf course is at 1350 metres elevation (4430 feet), and is normally covered in snow from mid-October until late May or early June. It isn't uncommon for snow to fall in June or September, and even occasionally during the summer. From early May until late August, insects can be a real pest. Blackflies, horseflies, mosquitoes, and no-see-ums (biting midges) can put a real damper on an otherwise perfect afternoon in the mountains. Precipitation is twice that of the valley bottom, and if it rains anywhere in the North Okanagan, it is most likely to be up in the mountains. Typically, the golf season would be relatively short, from mid-June until mid-September (about 3 months).
From a business perspective, a golf course in a sub-alpine area seems ludicrous. Such a short season would allow little time to generate enough revenues to even cover expenses. Yet there are a few golf courses at similar elevations (Kananaskis, Banff Springs). One thing to consider when assessing the economic viability of golf courses like Banff Springs and Kananaskis, is that these areas generally receive less snowpack than Silver Star, and they are located in popular summer destinations, with no competing golf courses nearby. A golf course at Silver Star would have to compete for customers against over 20 other courses which are easier to access, have better weather, and have few annoying insect pests. Thus, the price the public would be willing to pay for a round of golf at Silver Star could be relatively low.
The revenues generated by a golf course pale in comparison to those generated by the ski resort's winter operations. A round of golf typically takes about 4 hours, with a maximum of 4 golfers playing any one hole at one time. This means that on a typical summer day, a maximum of about 72 players every 4 hours, or about 200 players a day can play the course. If green fees were say, $30, maximum daily revenues would be about $6000. Compare that to a busy day on the ski hill, with up to 10,000 skiers each paying up to $71 for a daypass ($710,000). In addition to the lift tickets, destination skiers typically spend much more than that on accommodations, meals, and other activities.
So what would motivate Silver Star Mountain Resort to build a golf course that seemingly makes no business sense? There is a three-fold answer to this question, and the motivations are: 1) the Ministry of Tourism insists that they develop summer activities as part of their All Season Resort Policy, 2) associated real estate developments would offset the losses from the golf course operations, and most important of all, 3) sewage effluent can be disposed of on a golf course.
Lands Needed for Sewage Effluent Disposal
To understand Silver Star Mountain Resort's rationale for proposing a golf course in the southeast corner of Silver Star Provincial Park, it is helpful to look at a 1997 map of the park.
Silver Star Controlled Recreation Area outlined in red. Proposed 510 hectare deletion outlined in green (from March 1997 negotiations with B.C. parks)
As you can see from the map, the ski area Controlled Recreation Area (CRA) was at that time completely surrounded by Class A Provincial Parkland. The sewage lagoons are located southeast and slightly lower than the ski resort village, so all the sewage flows by gravity down to the sewage treatment plant. The exfiltration lagoon had been steadily losing capacity as it was becoming clogged with solids, and effluent irrigation around the lagoons had not yet started. In order for real estate development to proceed on the mountain, more land would be needed for sewage effluent disposal.
Regulations prohibit the disposal of sewage or sewage effluent in a Class A park. The benchland in the southeast corner of the park would be a convenient place to dispose of the sewage effluent, but the only way to have this land taken out of the park would be to propose a recreational facility that could accept sewage effluent. The resort had failed in its attempt to have these lands deleted from the park in 1991 when it hosted the World Cup Cross Country races, so this time, by proposing a golf course, it stood a much better chance of having these lands deleted from the park, and as an added benefit, the golf course could be used to dispose of sewage effluent!
Was the main motivation for proposing a golf course simply to secure more land for sewage effluent irrigation? Certainly, recent activity on the golf course lands seems to suggest so. There is no golf course, and the ski resort claims they are not currently building one. Yet they have logged 4 clearcuts in the shape of fairways, and are ready to log 5 more at any time. These logged clearcuts will be irrigated with sewage effluent.
510 hectares (larger than Vancouver's Stanley Park) of pristine forested park land was deleted from Silver Star Provincial Park specifically to allow the ski resort to build a golf course. If the public knew then what it knows now, it is unlikely these lands would have ever been deleted from the park.
