City of 18,000 Planned for Silver Star Mountain?
Even though Silver Star Mountain Resort is still working to their 1994 Master Plan which limits buildout to 7099 bed units, new information hints that the top-secret, long-awaited updated Resort Master Plan may include plans for a small city of almost 18,000 at the top of Silver Star Mountain. Downstream residents may be surprised to learn that there are no plans to replace the outdated sewage treatment plant which has been contaminating the Vance Creek and Coldstream Creek community watersheds for the past two decades.
Instead, the Phase 1 and 2 spray irrigation program started in the Fall of 2003 will be expanded to include the golf course lands, where sewage effluent will be sprayed onto fairway-shaped clearcuts. A sewage effluent pipeline has been run almost 4 km down to the lands that were deleted from the southeast corner of Silver Star Provincial Park for a golf course that was scheduled to open in June of 2000. The golf course was never built, but 4 fairways were clearcut in the Fall of 2007, with plans to eventually clearcut all 18 fairways. Instead of being used for golfing however, plans are to run irrigation lines along the fairways and use the clearcuts for effluent disposal.
The Ministry of Tourism's Commercial Alpine Ski Policy (CASP) allows for almost unlimited development in fragile subalpine ecosystems, using the Comfortable Carrying Capacity (CCC) of the ski lifts as the only limiting criteria for resort expansion.
News of the massive planned expansion comes from the resort's sewage utility, whose 2008 Annual report states that by using the clearcut golf course fairways for effluent disposal, they will be able to process over 3,000 cubic metres of sewage per day, produced by a small city of 17,773 skiers. To view the extracted page from Silverhawk Utilities 2008 Annual Report, click the icon below.
For a detailed summary of current and future pillow counts, click the icon below.
