It was a rare sunny April day when beachcomber and artist Steve LaRocca showed a Richmond News reporter one of his frequent haunts: an abandoned landfill along the shores of the Fraser River.
The former landfill feels serene at first, with light whispers of the wind and gentle waves luring one closer to the shore. Upon closer inspection, however, dozens of deteriorating tires and other decrepit debris bring a sense of doom and despair – much like the scene in Planet of the Apes when Charlton Heston’s Taylor happens upon the Statue of Liberty and (spoiler alert) realizes he had been on his home planet all along.
“I think in the grand scheme of things worldwide, this really is a drop in the bucket. But it’s our bucket, you know, it’s the City of Richmond,” said LaRocca as he surveyed the debris peppered along the shores, picking up the occasional shoe sole or spoon for his collection.
His treasures will ultimately be turned into artwork and posted on his Twitter account @FraserRiverFind.
During the two-hour tour, there was no other living creatures in sight apart from the occasional water birds and calling cards left behind by fellow treasure hunters. The only sign of human activity was the distant shouts from workers going about their day at nearby industrial sites.
The former landfill, which is about 2.75 acres according to LaRocca, spans two beaches between No. 6 and 8 roads, also known as the 8 Ball and The Jungle, and can only be accessed during low tide.
According to former Richmond city councillor Harold Steves, it was believed to have been traded to the federal government in the mid-1960s but was later shut down. The Port of Vancouver, on the other hand, claimed the site was under city jurisdiction. In the 1970s, pollution charges were laid against the site and a cleanup order was issued by Environment Canada.
Landfill a risk to marine life
LaRocca first brought the state of the former dumpsite to the attention of the Richmond News two years ago. Since then, he has been mapping the layout of the area and recording the debris he has seen over the years.
Embedded in the walls are decades of trash from the landfill, forming the base of the industrial sites above the beaches. Trees teeter precariously over the edge and industrial vehicles have had to park further from the edge due to safety concerns, LaRocca said.
“I’m just basically getting evidence, so I can show how much worse it gets. Because this is way worse than a couple of years ago,” said LaRocca, adding that the walls of dirt along the shore have receded over the past few years due to tidal action.
“You’ve got basically almost the weight of the world holding onto all that stuff,” he said.
One pull of any of the debris, be it a sheet of plastic or a vintage Coke bottle, would result in a cascade of brittle soil.
Apart from manmade trash, fallen logs are also scattered all over the area.
“If this was Jericho Beach or the Spanish Banks or something, these logs would all be cleaned up. A tree falls down here, it stays fallen down here,” said LaRocca.
And comments on social media urging the Richmond citizen to take action have contributed to his frustration.
“A lot of the garbage where (the tide) is hitting is loose, and it can’t be picked up, cleaned up in a traditional sense… This wall of garbage actually goes back at least 100 feet here… You know, you clean all that stuff up, the next day more stuff’s going to come out,” he explained.
But having found trash at Bark Park and Gilbert Beach that appeared to have originated from the former landfill, LaRocca feels the need to stop the pollution now more than ever.
City Coun. Michael Wolfe, who happened upon the area while exploring Richmond on his boat, feels the same.
“Every time you go there it would be different because (the area) is tidally influenced and the tugboats and carriers, whenever they go by there, the huge waves they cause… it just continually puts more debris into the river and into the ocean,” he said.
“I’m sure this is like a stream of buried garbage fragments stretching from that point downriver.”
Wolfe said plastic could be circulating in the local ecosystem through the food chain – marine life can either get entangled in the trash or experience plastic contamination, which can affect their health and reproduction. Sinking trash can also create dead zones in the ocean, which disrupts bottom dwellers such as crabs, worms and other organisms and affect migratory species.
“So it disrupts not just locally, but a much wider area gets impacted because the Fraser River is on the Pacific Flyway, and it’s an area of importance and used by so many other species that don’t just reside here all year,” he said.
The best solution, according to Wolfe, is to fully remove the landfill.
“The whole dyke in that region needs to be removed and taken elsewhere to an actual landfill, and then replaced with a giant rip-rap rock style of dyking that is done elsewhere,” he said, adding it would be a complex process that requires provincial and federal oversight and proper timing to ensure Richmond is not unprotected while the work is being done.
Steves and LaRocca also previously suggested that a rip-rap cover of the landfill or a weir system, respectively, might be viable options.
Clean up on aisle 8 (Ball)
When the News first reported on the issue in 2021, the City of Richmond had declined to comment because of an ongoing lawsuit between the city and several First Nations groups over the land.
However, Wolfe and city spokesperson Clay Adams recently confirmed action is being taken to address the issue. According to Adams, while the city does not have a timeline as of now, it is “moving as quickly” as possible.
“The City is certainly concerned about the environmental condition of the foreshore of the Fraser River near Dyke Road, and has engaged an environmental consultant to carry out an assessment of the area,” said Adams.
“Once that assessment is complete and recommendations provided, we hope to partner with a volunteer group to clean up the area.”
Thanks to LaRocca’s efforts, two volunteer groups, Tire Stewardship and Ocean Legacy, are currently waiting for the city’s go-ahead.
LaRocca tagged the executive director of Tire Stewardship BC, Rosemary Sutton, on Twitter asking if their organization was aware of the situation in Richmond. Sutton responded that they were not.
Since hearing about the situation in March, Tire Stewardship has connected with Ocean Legacy to coordinate clean-up efforts. Although Ocean Legacy had initially planned on only cleaning up the tires, the scope of the cleanup might change depending on the City of Richmond’s feedback.
“I would really hope that we would have something and have Ocean Legacy in place, and by June, this whole thing would be cleaned up,” said Sutton.
“And that’s just assuming that the assessment done by the City of Richmond… doesn’t result in needing to do something additional.”
Back at the junkyard, LaRocca told the News he will remain cautiously optimistic about the recent developments until he sees concrete action being taken.
When asked why he thought it took so long for the city and other organizations to act despite his efforts in the past two years, LaRocca attributes it to his initial lack of a platform.
“I’ve got a bigger reach than I’ve ever had before,” he said, adding he has since categorized his posts into easily searchable hashtags such as #FraserRiverJunkyard that help get his message out.
He also cautioned not to blame companies who owned the products found at the site, as “everybody that was using this garbage dump was using it honestly and legally at the time.”
Frustrations aside, LaRocca is determined to keep returning to the former dumpsite as long as the tides brings in new treasures.
“People worry about me sometimes, like, ‘Oh, what’s it like to have nobody listening to you? Nobody’s doing anything about all these problems down here?’ Well, I hate it, Steve LaRocca hates it,” he said.
“(But) FraserRiverFind loves it.”
- With files from Kirsten Clarke
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