About 200 people gathered on the bluffs overlooking British Columbia’s (B.C.) Horseshoe Bay Monday to protest the B.C. government’s plan to build a four-lane highway through Eagleridge Bluffs, part of the Sea-to Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler, venues for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The $130 million section of highway improvements is expected to take 24 to 30 months to complete.
The protesters want the province of B.C. to consider a tunnel as an alternative to protect a forested area that would be bulldozed for the new stretch of highway.
But the government says the new route would move traffic faster and more safely than the highway that exists now.
The CBC reports that critics of the plan say it makes more sense to tunnel under the forest, or widen the existing highway, instead of blasting through the wetland home of the rare, red-legged frog, which is supposed to be protected.
B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon says the government has considered all the options and isn’t about to reverse his plans for the new stretch of highway.
He said, “it’s because it’s better for safely, it has equivalent environmental impacts and it saves money for taxpayers. Nothing has changed that would change my mind. We’re going forward”.
