A landslide that sent part of a Greater Victoria property spilling into a nearby waterway after a retaining wall collapsed Monday is turning into a jurisdictional mess, neighbours say.
The Township of Esquimalt says heavy rains caused a slope failure at 933 Mesher Place, a property along the Gorge Waterway, taking out a wooden staircase and deck and sending a massive chunk of land into the water.
The home on the property also appeared dangerously close to sliding down the embankement.
“I had a look and I couldn’t believe what I saw. I basically saw a whole bank of land just disappear,” said Rob Wickson, president of the Gorge-Tillicum Community Association. “It’s now in the water and the water’s all muddy. The dock is on its way down there, the deck is completely moved down the hill. The retaining wall’s coming off.”
Esquimalt fire crews assessed the scene and reassured concerned neighbours that the home is not in danger of going into the waterway.
But Wickson said he’s worried it could happen again.
“This may just be the tip of the iceberg. Is the land underneath stable? We don’t know that,” he said. “I saw a couple people looking around at stuff but I didn’t see a sense of urgency, and that bothered me.”
Because the waterway system is looked after by multiple agencies including branches of the federal, provincial and municipal government, no one has shown leadership when it comes to managing the spill, Wickson said.
“We need one overarching body that’s in charge and has some teeth that they can enforce this,” he said. “We’ve got the derelict boat issue, we’ve got the live-aboard boat issue, we’ve got oil spills going into the creeks and the rivers and the streams and waterway. How do you manage all that from one cohesive point of view?”
He’s now calling for the creation of a single regulatory agency that residents can go to when waterway issues occur.
Currently, the shoreline of the waterway is a provincial matter, while the middle of the water is under federal control.
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said the city’s immediate concern is stabilizing the site to make sure another slide doesn’t occur in a period of heavy rain.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “The Gorge is a place that we all want to protect, so when we see a slide like this into the waterway, the immediate thought is what effect will this have on the Gorge?”
Esquimalt sent a building inspector to the site to ensure structural stability and that all utilities on the property were intact.
It said it will “address any municipal regulatory issues as necessary.”
Emergency Management BC, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Transport Canada, the Ministry of Environment and the Vancouver Island Health Authority have also been notified of the incident.
No one suffered any injuries in the slide.
