June 2011 correspondence between a resident and a CRD park planner.  

What is startling in this email exchange is the response from the CRD Park planner to the resident's call for the CRD to clean the ditches:

•  it is unlikely that we will do anything about the ditches until we have a better sense of our overall plan for the future of the park. 
  
• We also don’t have the budget, staff resources, or time to do anything about the ditches this year, even if it was in our long-term park management plans.
  
• we feel we don’t have enough information to know how the ditch system relates to the mosquito problem. 
  

These comments fly in the face of the express duty of CRD Parks in the park bylaw to keep all the ditches clean of debris each year - this is CRD policy.  It is not up to park staff to decide if they will or will not follow it, it is their duty to.   

It strains credibility for CRD parks staff to suggest they do not know how a drainage system impacts mosquito problem.  

• The park by;laws speaks of the importance of draining mosquito breeding sites.  
• The annual reports from their own mosquito control contractor, D.R. Regan,  repeat over and over that mosquitoes breed in standing water.  
• And the CRD had been provided with the newspaper article from 1937 that described how the drainage ditches when constructed in 1936 eradicated the mosquitoes from what is now the park area.   
  

Extract from the CRD email:

Relatedly, regarding your comments about the ditches and mosquitos, it is unlikely that we will do anything about the ditches until we have a better sense of our overall plan for the future of the park.  We also don’t have the budget, staff resources, or time to do anything about the ditches this year, even if it was in our long-term park management plans.  I understand that you are bothered by mosquitos and that you attribute this nuisance to our lack of ditch maintenance.  However, we feel we don’t have enough information to know how the ditch system relates to the mosquito problem.