Environmental Baseline Inventory
Fleenor and Associates Environmental, a group of registered professional biologists based in Courtenay BC, was retained by Island Coastal Ventures to complete the following baseline environmental assessment work tasks over the 2008-2009 period:
- Background research to determine the site’s regional biogeoclimatic setting and sensitive ecosystem inventory classification, and whether previous environmental assessment work had been completed on the site or surrounding properties by other workers;
- Desktop-based “Species at Risk” assessment to determine the likelihood that rare or endangered species or communities may be present on the site;
- Inventory, morphological classification, and functional assessment of all aquatic features and riparian zones on the site, including wetlands, watercourses, and waterbodies;
- Real-time climatic data collection, including periodic monitoring of air temperature, rainfall and snowfall;
- Field inventory of existing terrestrial and aquatic / riparian habitats;
- Field inventory of existing plant and wildlife species;
- Fish presence assessment within the site’s aquatic features;
- Installation of hydrometric data collection stations, including periodic monitoring of flow periodicity and stage discharge responses of the site’s watercourses from precipitation events;
- Physical surface water parameter measurements, including the periodic collection of pH, specific conductance, temperature, total dissolved solids, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen data from the site’s watercourses; and
- Surface water quality monitoring, including the periodic collection of water samples with full-spectrum laboratory analyses for physical, chemical, and microbiological parameters.
The results of this work, including assessments of potential environmental impacts on key environmental receptors from any proposed development, resource preservation strategies, regulatory setback requirements from sensitive aquatic features and riparian zones, recommendations for the enhancement of existing (or the creation of new) aquatic habitat, and suggestions to guide the site’s planning and design team, defined some of the core environmental constraints for the Site Adaptive Planning and Design process.
