A group of homeowners living in the Sunshine Valley Estates housing complex in Lower Nicola believe the Woodward Road property known as Dry Lake is now safe from the biosolids industry.
The group of residents sold the property to buyers, intent on using it for recreational purposes, after placing restrictive covenants on it that prohibit the spread of biosolids, and other soil contaminants on it.
The residents bought the property from biosolids competing company BioCentral earlier this year in order to prohibit such activity, which they feared would contaminate an aquifer they use for drinking water.
Georgia Clement, one of the residents and spokesperson for the anti-biosolids group Friends of the Nicola Valley, said the group broke even on the sale of the property to four families from Chilliwack.
“We allowed them to subdivide it into four, 80 acre parcels, and I think they’re each going to have a cabin or an RV up there and call it a get-away place,” Clement said.
She said the sale officially closed in late April.
“We bought it for $450,000, we sold it for $475,000 and then by the time we paid legal fees and commission and registered the restrictive covenants, there wasn’t too much money left over,” she said.
BioCentral purchased the property for about $400,000 with the intention to spread biosolids on it. This sparked outrage and protests from residents of Sunshine Valley Estates, including a road block of BioCentral’s Sunshine Valley Road composting site about a year ago.
Local First Nations bands soon called for a moratorium on biosolids being trucked into the Nicola Valley, and the company diverted its shipments to a site near Clinton.
The group of residents approached BioCentral about buying the property in 2015.
