BY LORNE ECKERSLEY
Advance staff
Even a plan to bring in goats to help with a weed problem at Crestbrook Gardens, the low-cost housing development off 11th Avenue South, has failed.
Resident Myrna Johnson had arranged with a local farm to supply goats to combat the weeds that cover a berm that runs through the property. But the farm declined after being informed by Mayor Ron Toyota that there are poisonous purple hemlock plants in the vicinity, which are hazardous to humans and animals.
“My allergies have just blown up,” resident Maggie Zsoltaros said last week, gesturing to the berm, which is covered with a two-foot high growth of grasses and weeds. “And they (Cranbrook Mental Health Association, which manages the property for BC Housing) will only cut it once a year—in October.”
Zsoltaros’s allergies aren’t only exacerbated by the weeds on the community’s property, though. Outside the fence, Town of Creston property, another high growth of weeds and grasses flourishes. (Some of it was cut by the Town works crew later in the week.)
“We finally have a local contractor cutting the lawn (in previous years the job was handled by a Cranbrook business), and that’s great, but they aren’t paid to maintain the berm,” Johnson said.
Zsoltaros said the abundant growth is more than just a problem for residents with allergies.
“It becomes a fire hazard, too,” she said. “Our fire insurance policies, which we have to have as a condition to live here, say that the insurance is void if a known fire hazard is too close to the residence—just look at this!” Many of the units appear to be within a danger zone, and Zsoltaros said the irrigation system has not been turned on.
While a Town representative visited the property outside the fences, which led to the cutting of some weeds, he pointed out that the Town is not responsible for anything within the Crestbrook Gardens property.
Signs on the entrance to Steve’s Ride, a walking path that runs past the south side of Crestbrook Gardens, warn of the dangers of purple hemlock, and ask pedestrians and their pets to keep to the trail.
“I don’t know what we are going to do next,” said Zsoltaros, who was once a Town Councillor. “But we aren’t stopping until we get some results.”