Due to the nature of the surrounding landscape, the Lake Errock community has been periodically subjected to flooding and its associated hazards.  To protect both people and buildings, guidelines for elevating structures above ground level, which would allow water and debris to flow around buildings, were introduced by Thurber Engineering.  Although these guidelines were in place, individual property owners were still required to hire, at their own cost, a geotechnical engineer to assess their specific property for building permit approvals.

In order to alleviate this costly and time-consuming process, the FVRD contracted Cordilleran Geoscience to prepare a report that outlines building elevation requirements and allows the FVRD to approve residential building permits without the need for site-specific geotechnical reports in most of Lake Errock under the following conditions:

• As long as the proposed construction will meet the requirement for elevation above ground level, then no additional hazard assessment report will be needed.
• On about 70 of the 200 properties in the report area, FVRD will still require that building foundations are protected against scouring and undermining that could be caused by fast-moving, debris-laden floodwaters flowing around the buildings.  FVRD will require engineered design and inspection of the scour protection measures on those lots.
• A covenant will still need to be registered on title, attaching the new Cordilleran report, when FVRD relies that report for building approval.
• The report applies to single-family residential development only.  Other more intense development such as subdivisions will still need to have site-specific geotechnical reports done.

If you have any questions, please contact Rick McDermid at 604.702.5004 or 1.800.528.0061, or by email at planninginfo@fvrd.bc.ca