Waste Management and Environmental Control:
Exploring the Changing Landscapes of Bailey Road and the
Bailey Sanitary Landfill in Chilliwack, British Columbia
Miranda Monosky
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Terah Sportel
Second Reader: Dr. Garry Fehr
2018
Geography and the Environment
University of the Fraser Valley

Table of Contents
List of Figures................................................................................................................................ ii
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: Literary Context .........................................................................................................5
Political Ecology Broadly ............................................................................................................6
Framing Environmental Change...............................................................................................8
From Environmental Degradation to Environmental Identities .............................................10
Environmental Justice: Whose Sacrifice? ..................................................................................11
Landfills and Risk ......................................................................................................................15
Landfill Siting: What is Fair? .................................................................................................18
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................20
Chapter 3: Methodology..............................................................................................................22
Tzeachten First Nation Partnership ............................................................................................23
Field Work and Data Collection.................................................................................................25
Future Research Recommendations ...........................................................................................31
Chapter 4: Bailey Road Landscapes: Agricultural and Colonial Roots .................................33
First Nations in the Fraser Valley ..............................................................................................34
Political Autonomy and Fracturing the Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe ....................................................36
Municipal Waste through Time ..................................................................................................40
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................48
Chapter 5: Geographies of Distrust and Uncertainty ..............................................................50
Local Perceptions of Risk and Landfill Disamenities ................................................................51
Waste Narratives and the Municipal Agenda .............................................................................65
Chapter 6: Conclusion .................................................................................................................78
References .....................................................................................................................................81

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List of Figures
Figure 3.1: Map of Chilliwack, BC ...............................................................................................22
Figure 3.2: Study area separated by land use.................................................................................26
Figure 4.1: Location of Skowkale, Yakweakwioose, Tzeachten, and Soowahlie reserve lands ...38
Figure 4.2: Map of British Columbia’s lower Fraser River ...........................................................41
Figure 4.3: Map of Agricultural Reserve Land in Chilliwack .......................................................42
Figure 4.4: Bailey Road and the Bailey Sanitary Landfill in 1983 ................................................44
Figure 4.5: Bailey Road and the Bailey Sanitary Landfill in 2016 ................................................45
Figure 5.1: Map of utilities in Chilliwack ......................................................................................55
Figure 5.2: Monthly waste quantities received at the Bailey Landfill ...........................................58
Figure 5.3: Garbage along Bailey Road on September 27, 2017...................................................59
Figure 5.4: Garbage on a Bailey Road resident’s private property................................................60
Figure 5.5: A small section of the Bailey Landfill is covered in seagulls scavenging for food ....62
Figure 5.5: Seagulls at the Bailey Landfill on December 16, 2017 ...............................................62

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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deep gratitude to all those who have helped me through my
research. First, I would like to thank Tzeachten First Nation, including the band council and
Chief Derek Epp for their support and guidance, as well as all of the band members willing to
participate in this research. It was their enthusiasm for this project that encouraged me to keep
moving forward. This project would not have been possible without the consistent support shown
by many of the geography faculty at UFV. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Terah Sportel
for always challenging me to be a better, more critical researcher. Your door was always open to
me, and I am grateful. I am also thankful to Dr. Garry Fehr for his guidance and consistent
positivity throughout this project. Finally, I would like to thank the UFV Research Office for the
supporting this research and its dissemination.

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Chapter 1: Introduction
Municipal waste management is both an essential service for Canadian cities and a means
by which vulnerable communities are becoming more marginalized. Modern, highly engineered
landfills lead to cleaner cities by providing residents with a safe, centralized location for their
garbage, while simultaneously creating areas that have been sacrificed by those in power without
consideration for nearby communities. Often, those living close to a landfill are already
vulnerable based on socio-economic factors such as race, ethnicity, or income. This research
examines the Bailey Sanitary Landfill (commonly referred to as the Bailey Landfill), located on
Bailey Road in Chilliwack, British Columbia. This facility shares a border with both Tzeachten
First Nation reserve land and agricultural land, and thus impacts a diverse set of people in many
different ways. While landfill research often focuses on the physical and measureable (i.e. risks
to health and safety), this research pursues a less common approach through an exploration of
intangible impacts on local residents through qualitative methods. The Bailey Landfill is
connected to negative social, cultural, and economic impacts that are experienced exclusively by
Bailey Road residents, who are simultaneously being excluded from municipal waste discourse,
planning, and management.
From a political ecology perspective the Bailey Landfill is understood as a political
construct. The City of Chilliwack presents the facility as politically inert, existing as a basic,
essential service in a location chosen exclusively for its natural, physical characteristics.
However, this does not provide a comprehensive image of its place within the community.
Examining the historical, economic, and political context within which the landfill exists allows
for a more comprehensive understanding of its location and expansion over time. The landfill
emerged from the rapid spread of European settlement and capitalist development, and its
location along Bailey Road was based on both the areas natural characteristics and surrounding
demographics and levels of development. Furthermore, the Bailey Landfill remains a necessity
for the basic functioning of the city because of the unsustainable economic processes that
continue to facilitate Chilliwack’s expanding suburbs, rising cost of living, and growing
population. Additionally, these processes have produced losers – those who are marginalized by
these development processes (Blaikie & Brookfield, 1987). Bailey Road and its communities
have, in many ways, become marginalized by their neighbouring waste disposal site and the
powerful political authorities and economic processes that manage and sustain it. Through the
1

examination of Chilliwack’s history of colonial occupation and environmental control, Bailey
Road can be viewed as a microcosm of the abuse of Indigenous peoples within the region. By
controlling the natural environment and putting boundaries around where Indigenous spaces
could fully and safely exist, the colonial government facilitated European settlement and the
rapid expansion of non-Indigenous political and economic systems (e.g. Harris, 2004).
This research explores the different perceptions or risk and disamenities related to the
Bailey Landfill in order to comprehensively understand the impacts of a waste site on local
people. Included in these differing understandings of the Bailey Landfill is the narrative put forth
by the City of Chilliwack, which presents the facility as being a safe, efficient, and for the good
of the people. While there are certainly both positive and negative by-products of the Bailey
Landfill, they are not represented evenly between social groups and spatially within Chilliwack.
This is true for most waste management facilities (Bullard, 1993; Ishiyama, 2003; Endres, 2009).
Furthermore, while any land use is likely to produce multiple understandings and narratives from
different stakeholders, this can quickly become problematic when one narrative is deemed
superior or more correct than others. Governments across North American routinely ignore the
social and cultural costs of waste management in favour of simpler economic approaches (Ham
et al., 2013). However, even highly technical services like waste management have important
social and cultural implications and potential economic threats that can do irreparable harm to
local communities. These less tangible implications are due to the deep connections between our
physical and social worlds (Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003; Heynen et al., 2006), and the
significant role that our physical environment plays in determining our health and well-being.
Through the lenses of political ecology and environmental justice we can examine the
City’s carefully crafted narrative to determine how powerful authorities are framing potentially
dangerous land uses. As this research demonstrates, the City of Chilliwack is perpetuating
extremely limiting understandings of the landfill, and their restrictive narrative has allowed little
room for local residents to act as experts and influence the City’s definitions of risk, offsite
impacts, and consultation. A consideration of social and cultural implications is challenging,
especially for relatively small municipal governments with limited resources. Examining the true
costs and benefits of a landfill in a truly objective way is impossible due to differing ethics,
ideals, and priorities of various stakeholders (Zaman & Lehmann, 2011). Furthermore, the ways

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in which we conceptualize our environments and produce environmental narratives are deeply
rooted in person experiences and attachments to place (Robertson et al., 2000). Therefore, the
externalities produced by the Bailey Landfill are perceived and experienced differently for
different groups and individuals.
As this research shows, Bailey Road residents do not always have consistent experiences
and perceptions of the Bailey Landfill. While Indigenous participants were found to have more
homogenous concerns due to their shared background and close personal relationships, these
concerns differed in some important ways from those of Bailey Road farmers. Furthermore,
farmer responses had little consistency between them, demonstrating that even small
communities can contain differing values and ideals. While landfills can be understood by some
as a wicked problem with no objectively right answer (Hui Chan, 2016), this research will
demonstrate that the City of Chilliwack could do more to understand what the problem is. By
understanding the less tangible implications and complex historical context of the Bailey
Landfill, and allowing local people to participate in the construction of waste narratives, the City
of Chilliwack can create municipal services that do not further marginalize small agricultural or
Indigenous communities.
These historical, cultural, and social understandings of the Bailey Landfill are important
for analysing the ways in which powerful political structures can control the very identities of
local people. The activities and behaviours that take place within a particular environment, both
past and present, help shape the identities of the people acting upon it (Robbins, 2012). When an
environment changes, the activities and thus the identities that exist within it, also change. When
powerful authorities are given control over a particular environment, any resulting changes can
restrict a community’s activities and therefore their ability to assert and express their identities.
Therefore, we need to consistently question the power that local authorities have over not just
our own behaviours but the physical environments we live within. The City of Chilliwack has a
high level of autonomy over the management of the Bailey Landfill, and changes to the facility
only ever require approval from higher levels of government. Thus, the people who are most
affected by a growing landfill are given little to no authority over it. This is unjust in its own
right, but particularly important when examining the facility from the perspective of Tzeachten
First Nation. Restrictions on the ways in which Indigenous peoples can express and assert their

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identities can quickly mimic the ways in which Indigenous peoples were controlled and
oppressed by a colonial government not long ago. By focusing on Indigenous perspectives and
comparing them to non-Indigenous and municipal perspectives, this research aims to
demonstrate how perceptions of landfill disamenities and municipal governance are tied to
cultural understandings of place and the environment.
This thesis will explore the complex challenges faced by Tzeachten First Nation and the
Bailey Road community, and the contexts in which those challenges exist, beginning with a
review of academic literature. This literature contains summaries of relevant political ecology
and environmental justice literature to establish a framework for the subsequent analysis of
research data. Despite these being two distinct fields, this literature review will demonstrate
important overlaps in their theories and academic research. Both political ecology and
environmental justice provide valuable tools to dissect environmental issues to understand how
they impact and effectively marginalize people on the ground. Chapter three follows with a
discussion of the research methods used for data collection and their justification. This research
employed qualitative methods, particularly semi-structured interviews and a discourse analysis,
to uncover silenced voices of local peoples, and to analyse the perceptions of environmental
changes and waste management externalities of different stakeholders.
Chapter four follows with a brief history of Chilliwack and the lower Fraser River region.
This chapter provides important historical context for the Bailey Landfill, arguing that the
facility reflects the unjust, oppressive methods used by colonial officers to contain Indigenous
peoples to small, marginal lands. Finally, a detailed examination of the data collected from
Bailey Road residents and the City of Chilliwack is provided in Chapter five. This chapter begins
by exploring the patterns in responses from farmers and Indigenous respondents in order to
provide a more comprehensive understanding of the Bailey Landfill than the City’s official
representation. Additionally, a discussion of the importance of understanding the differing social
and cultural backgrounds of Bailey Road residents will be provided since these can influence the
ways in which individuals interpret their environment and the Bailey Landfill. Finally, this
chapter will discuss the waste management narrative created by the City of Chilliwack, how it
conflicts with the narratives being created on Bailey Road, and why this is problematic. Lastly,
this thesis will conclude with chapter six, which will include closing thoughts.
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Chapter 2: Literary context
Municipal waste disposal and landfill siting has been debated in both academic literature
and public discourse for decades, beginning in the 1980’s with the Warren County protests
against a hazardous waste facility (McGurty, 2000). Public pushback stems from the threat to the
health and well-being of nearby residents and important land uses. Landfills also provide a
region with an efficient means of disposing of waste in a way that protects the broader regional
population from the health and safety risks association with the degradation of that waste. While
there are certainly both positive and negative by-products of any waste management regime, the
two are often represented unevenly between social groups and across space (Bullard, 1993;
Ishiyama, 2003; Endres, 2009). Furthermore, landfill studies often focus on the tangible side
effects of waste disposal and ignore the intangible effects on nearby residents (Davy, 1996). This
review of academic literature will focus on political ecology and environmental justice, and use
these as a lens to examine landfills, environmental risks, and how they impact already
marginalized communities. Because marginalized communities, by definition, hold less political
power than non-marginalized communities (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987), they are commonly
made to bear the burden of landfills while others reap the benefits (Learner, 2010).
This chapter begins by broadly introducing political ecology, a field within human
geography that aims to better understand the political processes involved in environmental
change and how it affects people on the ground. This is opposed to apolitical ecologies, which
view environmental issues as the result of natural processes (Richards & Watts, 2004; Lave,
2012). Attention is given to the environmental identities thesis, which works to explain the ways
that environmental change can result in changing identities, and what this means for local people
who have environmental policies and practices imposed upon them by those in power (Robbins,
2012). Political ecology is useful for examining powerful narratives that are used by those in
power to frame issues such as landfill siting and hazards in a way that suits the needs of the
many (Shade, 2015; Kunkel, 2017) and/or political-economic interests (Bixler, 2013), and
suppresses local concerns (Hudgins & Poole, 2014). A recounting of the history of the
environmental justice movement and its roots in local political action follows (Ballard, 1993;
McGurty, 2000). Because it began as a movement focused on landfill siting, environmental
justice as an academic field has produced a considerable body of knowledge on waste
management and its impacts on marginalized communities (for example, Szasz, 1994; Leonard,
5

1997; Ishiyama, 2003; Endres, 2012). Finally, the tangible and intangible threats associated with
landfill development are explored, including a discussion on current strategies meant to make
landfill siting fair and just, and why they fall short.

Political Ecology Broadly
Political ecology is a broad field within human geography that draws from political
economy, anthropology, environmental science, and development studies. It has produced a
plethora of research that seeks to politicize environmental issues by examining the systems and
powers in place that both affect and are affected by changing ecologies. This is in contrast to
apolitical ecologies, which Robbins (2012, 13) explains is an approach to environmental change
that views ecological systems as “politically inert”. Apolitical ecologies generally explain
environmental crises as being the result of population growth, technological changes, or poor
land use practices and ignore the political structures and institutions in place that complicate the
issue (Richards & Watts, 2004; Lave, 2012). While there is no unanimously agreed upon
definition of political ecology, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, 17) are commonly cited; they
explain that political ecology “combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political
economy. Together this encompasses the constantly shifting dialect between society and landbased resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself”. More simply, it is an
approach to environmental change that seeks to understand the relationships between society and
the natural world (Keil, 1998). Neumann (2005, 9) explains that anthropogenic changes to the
environment “cannot be understood without consideration of the political economic structures
and institutions within which the transformations are embedded”. In practice, much of political
ecology research focuses on issues of social justice that stem from environmental degradation
and resource disputes, focusing on the losers of environmental regimes (Forsyth, 2004;
Neumann, 2005; Robbins, 2012).
Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) explain environmental change and specifically land
degradation as being the result of local production and resource extraction being restrained by
global political and economic decision-making. They focus heavily on the role of the state – a
body that, in their analyses, “tends to lean its power to dominant groups and classes” (17). As a
result, this reinforces the status-quo and the continual accumulation of wealth by those dominant
6

groups. This commonly takes shape as taxation, land tenure policy, and the allocation of
resources. These actions by the state also produce losers – those who are marginalized by this
cycle of reinforcement. Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) explain that ecological and politicaleconomic marginalization differ, but overlap in important ways. For a landscape to be marginal,
it must have conditions that allow for a plant (or collection of plants, i.e. a forest) to survive, but
not flourish. However, to be politically and economically marginalized means that a group of
people (a class, gender, race, etc.) are excluded from participating in important aspects of society
such as employment, decision making, and secure housing. These two different concepts of
marginality overlap when the state enforces environmental policies that both limit the ability of
local people to use the land for livelihood production and affects the productivity of the natural
landscape. In this scenario, local people have become marginalized and the environment has
become ecologically marginal. The political economic marginalization of local people can then
lead to unsustainable land use practices, further marginalizing the land and the people, “hence,
land degradation is both a result of and a cause of social marginalization” (Blaikie and
Brookfield, 1987, 23).
While the interactions between politics and the environment are clearly demonstrated in
political ecology literature, there is debate within the field about the proportional representation
(or lack thereof) of both politics and ecology. While the work of Piers Blaikie in the 1980s
represented a shift towards understanding the environment as social and political, Watts (1997)
argues that his work did not engage strongly enough with politics. This becomes a problem if
political ecology research is meant to uncover issues of social and environmental injustice in an
attempt to improve peoples’ lives – how can justice be achieved if powerful political structures
are not adequately analysed and understood? Alternatively, some have criticised political
ecology for favouring political and social analyses over ecology. Walker (2005) questions the
representation of ecological knowledge and natural processes, arguing that ecological
implications of the issues explored in political ecology are rarely given explicit attention.
Similarly, Lave et al. (2014, 3) argues that the majority of political ecology “frequently
privileges social processes/theories in the explanation of biophysical situations”.
However, Zimmerer and Bassett (2003) argue that more emphasis must be put on both
environmental science and the social and political world, and the complex influence that the two

7

have on each other. They explain that “the environment is not simply a stage or arena in which
struggles over resource access and control take place. We consider nature […] to play an active
role in shaping human-environmental dynamics” (Zimmerer & Bassett, 2003, 3). While human
processes often have a significant impact on the natural environment, it is also important to
understand the ways in which the natural environment is an active participant in responding to
and influencing human activities. This view of nature, Zimmerer and Basset (2003) explain, goes
beyond the dominant approaches to political ecology that seek only to politicize the environment.

Framing Environmental Change
Despite the ongoing debates within the field, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) established a
foundation upon which political ecology has expanded as a study of the dynamic interactions
between political economy, society, and nature. Robbins (2012) has further advocated for the use
of critical analyses of power in order to generate “less coercive, less exploitative, and more
sustainable ways of doing things” (20). Forsyth (2004) also argues that political ecology must
explore the interconnectedness of power, and how power and influence at different scales and in
different social spheres interact to produce our understanding and management of the
environment. This includes interactions between the individual, the community, local and state
governments, and global political and economic landscapes. Because of this emphasis on
relations of power, political ecology research often focuses on ethnography and discourse
analysis to better understand the often conflicting interests and perceptions of environmental
conflicts by different land users and powerful actors (Neumann, 2005). Examining discourse that
works to construct environmental knowledge is important for uncovering voices that are being
silenced for the sake of a dominant narrative. Adger et al. (2001) describes this kind of narrative
as hegemonic, one that dominates thinking and perceptions and influences our political and
social institutions.
Specific to this research, environmental narratives are tied to the narrator’s “particular
experiences, observations, and attachment to place” (Robertson et al., 2000, 120), and therefore
vary depending on the groups who are producing the narrative. Furthermore, multiple
environmental narratives may exist when multiple groups are connected to a particular place, as
8

is the case with Bailey Road and the Bailey Landfill. Multiple land users with different land uses
and environmental histories are likely to have different experiences, observations, and
attachments to place. As a result, the different groups existing along Bailey Road are likely to
produce different environmental narratives. When this is problematic is when one narrative is
deemed superior or more correct that the others. For example, when a municipal government’s
understanding of a land use is unquestioned and accepted as truth despite conflicting local
narratives. Forsyth (2004) similarly explains that environmental orthodoxies, or generalized
statements about the causes of environmental change, can oppress and undermine actors on the
ground by providing explanations that are overly simple and overshadow local voices. These
types of narratives are frequently accepted as fact due to their simplicity and can result in
powerful political actors imposing top-down environmental management systems without local
consultation due to their pervasive nature (Forsyth, 2004). While Adger et al. (2001) and Forsyth
(2004) apply these concepts to large-scale, global environmental narratives such as deforestation
and desertification, it can also apply to smaller-scale environmental narratives related to local
governing and powerful stakeholders. For example, Bixler (2013) describes the declining caribou
populations in southern British Columbia as largely an issue of conflicting narratives – while
knowledge among scientists is unanimous, powerful political and economic stakeholders have
constructed alternative, simpler narratives that better serve their needs. Because of the influence
of these constructed narratives, caribou populations have continued to decline (Bixler, 2013).
Some political ecology has sought to question the construction and perpetuation of
western knowledge and science itself (see Escobar, 1996; Forsyth, 1996; Forsyth 2004; Robbins,
2012; Thomas & Middleton, 1994). Forsyth (2004) explains that environmental science is often
accepted as truth without any awareness of how that science and its adoption may be influenced
by social and political factors. Uncritical environmental science can result in environmental
narratives that are too simple and ultimately unhelpful (Forsyth, 2008; for example Desbiez et
al., 2004; Zukosky, 2008). Furthermore, scientific conclusions can be appropriated by
environmental policy makers without consideration of how the adoption of scientific knowledge
can unfairly and unevenly affect land users, threaten local livelihoods, and intensify
environmental degradation (Forsyth, 2004; for example, Fairhead & Leach, 1996). This adoption
of scientific knowledge by political authorities can overshadow and suppress alternative
understandings of environmental best practices (Robbins, 2000). Lave (2012) argues that it is
9

important to question who holds the authority in scientific fields, and what is required for an
individual to become a scientist reputable enough to contribute to environmental policy making.
Lave (2012, 9) also questions how science will change “with the global rise of neoliberalism,
with its emphasis on the privatization and commercialization of knowledge”.
However, if political ecology is to question science and discourse, researchers must also
question their own conceptions of many of the ideas that are central to political ecology, such as
justice vs. injustice, threatened ecosystems vs. natural ecosystems, rural vs. urban, etc. It is for
this reason that ethnography has become a central methodology for political ecology – it helps us
to better understand how powerful, overarching political structures affect local people in their
day-to-day life. Local people must be given the opportunity to tell their own stories, using
political ecology as a medium for that story telling as opposed to a medium for researchers to
express their own beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions. The challenge for political ecology,
then, is analysing political and environmental relationships “in ways that enhance social justice,
but which do not impose a priori notions about each” (Forsyth, 2008, 763).

From Environmental Degradation to Environmental Identities
Political ecology literature clearly defines the transformation of any landscape as being
both physical (i.e. the physical changes taking place) and political (i.e. the multitude of human
forces that cause or influence the change). A changing landscape, though, also has social and
socio-economic implication because of the deep connection between our physical and social
worlds (Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003; Heynen et al., 2006). Robbins (2012) explains that
behaviours within an environment (livelihood activities, community organization, cultural
learning, etc.) influence one’s ideas about the environment, which influence their ideas about
themselves. When a landscape changes, so do the activities that occur on that land and therefore
the identities that emerge from those activities. Changes in environmental regimes (i.e. the
systems put in place by a group of people to manage the natural environment) can lead to new
ways of living, new ways of organizing, and new self-definitions. In other words, “people’s
beliefs and attitudes do not lead to new environmental actions, behaviors, or rules systems;
instead, new environmental actions, behaviors, or rules systems lead to new kinds of people.”

10

(Robbins, 2012, 216). This approach to environmental change seeks to understand the new
identities and social relations that are formed by these changes.
Where this type of examination is important, then, is when powerful authorities are given
control over a particular environment and enforce environmental regimes that restrict the local
community’s activities and therefore limit their ability to assert their identities and represent
themselves. In this case, authorities have the capacity to control the environment and the
identities and livelihood capabilities of local people (Robbins, 2012). For example, Sundberg
(1998) examines the ways in which non-government organizations (NGOs) in Guatemala have
constructed an identity that fits within their preconceived ideas of who indigenous peoples in
Guatemala are, and then used these preconceptions to construct conversation zones and land
tenure agreements. Those whose livelihood practices fit within this constructed identity were
given better access to the environment that others. As a result, local people began to reinvent
their own identities to match the ideals of NGOs in order to secure land and resources (Sundberg,
1998). The implication here is that by imposing, restricting, or denying certain environmental
behaviours, authorities are also challenging the very identities of the people that they govern.
Conversely, the way those people cope with environmental change can also work to challenge
the hegemonic ideals or preconceptions of those in power (Robbins, 2012, for example,
Bebbington, 1993; 1996).

Environmental Justice: Whose Sacrifice?
While environmental justice has evolved into its own distinct field within academic
literature, it began as a grassroots social movement involving a poor, predominantly black
community in Warren County, North Carolina protesting the development of a landfill in the
1980s (McGurty, 2000). Although the Warren County resistance failed to stop the construction
of the hazardous waste landfill, it brought together white landowners and local civil rights
leaders. By using its power to make land use decisions without input from local people, the state
created a social and political landscape that allowed for white and black groups to work together
and, as a result this unlikely coalition, has had profound and long lasting impacts on
environmental policy and social justice movements in the United States (McGurty, 2000). Since

11

then, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has explicitly recognized
environmental injustice and the unfair distribution of hazardous waste sites as a problem in the
United States that must be remedied in order to achieve equality and ensure the health and safety
of its citizens (for example EPA 1992; 1993).
Despite government and academic recognition, environmental justice has no set
definition. Some sources describe it as a condition that exists when all people have access to the
same level of protection from risks and hazards (EPA, 2017b), others emphasize the need for an
equal distribution of risk from and hazards (Steger, 2007; Low & Gleeson, 1998), and some
definitions emphasize the responsibility of the current generation to protect the environment for
future generations (Stephens et al., 2001), and the equal inclusion of all people in environmental
decision making (Endres, 2012). The common thread in these interpretations is the health and
well-being of all humans, and the recognition that our environment plays a significant role.
While some people understand the environment to be an integral part of a healthy, fulfilling life,
others view it as a source of hazards that one must cope with on a daily basis (Walker, 2012).
Environmental justice is a movement that seeks to not only uncover the winners and losers of
environmental change, but also create a more equal distribution of the benefits and hazards
provided by the environment. Where political ecology can be described as a toolbox used to
examine human-environment interactions and conflicts, environmental justice is a movement
used to mobilize action that can improve peoples’ lives. The siting of hazardous facilities,
especially those dealing with waste, are frequently at the centre of environmental justice issues
and local controversies (Endres, 2012; Szasz, 1994), as the risks associated with these land uses
are rarely distributed evenly amongst residents (see Bullard, 1990; Pezzullo, 2003).
Local pushback against waste management facilities is sometimes understood by
governments and businesses as simply being a case of Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY). In this
characterisation, local opposition is the result of stubborn, irrational local people who will never
be satisfied, and as such their concerns are not valued or taken seriously. However, this is an
over-simplification of what is ultimately an environmental justice issue (Boholm, 2004). Low
and Gleeson (1998) explain that environmental (in)justice is a very real, tangible condition that
has serious implications for our health and safety. While the environment can be a source of
many benefits that are integral to our lives (clean air, drinking water, food) and to the economies

12

of many countries (via tourism and resource extraction), those benefits are experienced by some
and not others. Further, enhancing the environment in some way to increase the benefits received
by some people often leads to deterioration of environmental health and therefore human health
for other people (Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003). Who receives these benefits and who suffers
the negative repercussions is controlled by actions from those in power, and is therefore political.
It is in this way that environmental justice discourse overlaps with political ecology, and as such
both are useful for understanding potentially harmful land use changes.
Often the location of undesirable and/or polluting land uses are decided based on the
priorities and ideals of a city/province/region/etc., and are influenced by pressures from more
powerful residents (i.e. those individuals and companies who have significant financial and
social capital) (Bullard, 1993). This leaves communities with less power (i.e. those with less
money and less time to object to the facilities) more likely to bear the burden of these
developments, as they are not able to influence decision making in the same way (Learner,
2010). Bullard (1990, 3) describes the siting of unwanted land uses close to less powerful
residents as “the path of least resistance” for land use planners and government authorities. The
divide between those who have power and those who do not have power to influence decision
making often aligns with differences in race, gender, class, and other social divisions (Bullard,
1993; Martinez-Alier et al., 2014; Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003).
Areas that are victim to intense pollution are commonly referred to in environmental
justice discourse as sacrifice zones (Learner, 2010; Dionne, 2016; Bullard, 2012). The physical
environment is sacrificed to the point of no longer being productive for ecological purposes or
safe for human residences. This is done for the sake of some human need that is deemed to be of
greater importance than its previous ecological function. In other terms, political actors decide to
degrade the environment to an arguably irreversible condition and this is justified by the
prescribed needs of the many. However, the term sacrifice zone in itself raises some important
questions about government mandated pollution – what exactly is being sacrificed, and who is
making that sacrifice? Learner (2010, 299) explains that “sacrifice zones do not exist by
accident. They are in fact shaped by powerful forces”, the location of these zones are shaped by
political and economic forces and often affect communities that are already marginalized and
further threaten their physical and mental health and therefore their livelihood capabilities as

13

well. Those who benefit from hazardous facilities, however, are not subject to the risks and
therefore do not sacrifice anything. Moreover, government authorities that allow sacrifice zones
to develop are imposing this sacrifice onto a group of people for the sake of some priority or
ideal that they have set.
For example, Shade (2015) explains that in Ecuador there has been a push by the
government to create jobs to increase the quality of life for residents, and the mining industry is a
key part of this due to its ability to employ a large number of people. The expansion of mining
activities has resulted in the sacrificing of local peoples’ desired land use practices and
livelihoods for the sake of national economic growth. Put in other terms, the expansion of mining
is meant to “ensure living well, in which some people and areas are ‘let die’ in the context of a
broader discourse of ‘making a living’” (Shade, 2015, 776). Similarly, mining activities in
British Columbia, Canada are correlated with higher community income and lower
unemployment rates (Shandro et al., 2009), and as a result it is often viewed by governments and
some communities as a solution to the economic difficulties faced by many rural towns despite
the environmental implications (i.e. the creations of a sacrifice zone). While mining can generate
income for the provincial government and stimulate economic development in a region, it also
frequently ignores indigenous land claims and threatens the values, identities, and cultural
activities of First Nations peoples in British Columbia (Kunkel, 2017).
Bullard (1993) argues that, given the disproportionately high number of non-white
residents living close to sacrifice zones, this type of land use planning has been an example of
environmental racism – the use of environmental policies and planning to discriminate against a
racial group. This is supported by statistical analyses such as Downey and Hawkins (2008),
which found that black and Hispanic households in the U.S. are more likely to live near
environmental hazards than white households, even if household income is the same. Similar
results have been found concerning waste siting and indigenous communities. For example,
nuclear waste facilities are frequently planned to be developed on American Indian land where
histories of colonisation and structural oppression have limited the tribes’ ability to participate in
meaningful decision making (Endres, 2009; Ishiyama, 2003; Leonard, 1997). The relationship
between race and environmental hazards is complicated and is the result of factors much more

14

complex than the dichotomous white colonialists versus non-white victims story that some oversimplified environmental justice discourse presents.
Ishiyama (2003) explains that when the American Department of Energy began searching
for places to store nuclear waste in the latter half of the 20th century, many American Indian
tribes were the first to express interest because they would be given monetary compensation.
While the waste was not forced upon these tribes, and they had to opt into the program, historic
and current-day structural forms of oppression (reservation systems, religious pressures, and
ecological transformation due to colonial settlement) had created a geography of isolation and
economic dispossession and marginalization for many of them (Ishiyama, 2003). Environmental
justice is complex, but the relationship between race, political-economy, and risk cannot ignored,
downplayed, or over-simplified given the volume of academic research pointing to the high level
of disproportionate risk for non-white communities.

Landfills & Risk
Waste management poses risks to different groups of people at different scales in
different ways. It can be argued that without access to a municipal waste facility (i.e. a landfill or
incinerator) a city risks becoming unclean due to unregulated, decentralized garbage disposal by
residents. This can threaten the health of the environment and the public through leachate and
water contamination (Alappat et al., 2008). The level of cleanliness and perceived health and
safety of city residents is important for the economic well-being of the city, as it can play a key
role in the cycle of private investment (on a corporate and individual scale) and subsequent urban
development. For a city, in a more general sense, the development of a landfill generates direct
positive effects for its residents. However, as has already been argued, landfills produce both
benefits and risks, and neither are distributed evenly across space and between different socioeconomic and racial groups.
For residents living close to a landfill there are potential threats to health and safety
through failed safety precautions (such as liner failures) and subsequent leachate into water
systems and agricultural land, as well as air pollution via landfill gas emissions generated by the
process of waste degradation (Nahman, 2011). Whether real or perceived, the health risks

15

associated with living near a landfill are felt so strongly that they have a greater negative effect
on housing prices than airports, animal production, and traffic congestion (Goetz, Shortle, &
Bergstrom, 2005). Furthermore, there are intangible risks that are put on nearby residents that are
not discussed as often because they are to quantify and measure. While the private sector and
government authorities tend to view landfill siting as a quantitative analysis of efficiency and
cost effectiveness, city residents may view the siting of a landfill in qualitative terms; for
example, it may violate of their sense of purity (Davy, 1996). Because both risks and benefits
(and whether or not one outweighs the other) can be perceived differently between people and
groups, it is challenging to come to a consensus on what the right system of waste management
is, and where the best location for a landfill is when planning for municipal waste management.
The risk to human health has been the centre of an ongoing discussion of the ethics
behind site planning for potentially harmful land uses (see Basta, 2014). However, there is no
definitive answer to these ethical questions of landfill siting, largely because landfills vary
greatly between sites. They can differ in size, age, accepted waste, containment measures,
treatment, etc., and are dependent on contextual factors such as the regions geography, political
landscape, and infrastructure (Westlake, 1997; EPA, 2017a). This means that there is a need for
case-by-case examinations of landfill sites to fully understand how the location and expansion of
a landfill can affect the surrounding physical landscape, and whether or not there are impacts on
nearby livelihoods and health. Although most landfills in the developed world are considered
“contained” or “sanitary” (landfills that use a high level of planning and engineering to separate
waste from the environment and humans), even these facilities can be harmful due to liner
failures, escaped waste materials, and the by-products of degradation (Westlake, 1997; Eshet et
al., 2005). In fact, a contained landfill is defined by the International Solid Wastes Association
(ISWA, 1992, 49) as one that “prevents the escape of polluting species at an unacceptable
concentration” and has an “extremely low” release of leachate into the environment. This means
that the highest standard for landfill facilities is not necessarily expected to achieve zero
leachate, or zero escaped pollution. Some amount of pollution, however small, is expected.
Therefore, while the city and its residents as a whole may benefit from having access to a
landfill, those who live adjacent to it suffer a disproportionate amount of risk to their health, their
social and cultural well-being, and the health of the environment. This risk and concern becomes

16

two-fold when a landfill shares space with land used for livelihood activities that are sensitive to
environmental change. Agriculture, for example, is particularly sensitive to soil quality and
weather change and, as a result, those who work in agriculture experience a high amount of
livelihood vulnerability (Keshavarz, Maleksaeidi, & Karami, 2017). Livelihood vulnerability
refers to the ability for one to sustain shocks to one’s livelihood (i.e. the means by which a
person or household acquires the necessities of life), and is influenced by risks that threaten the
multitude of resources (including natural, social, financial, physical, and human capital)
necessary to make a living (Hahn, Riederer, & Foster, 2009). A landfill can threaten the physical
landscape required for agricultural livelihoods, and thus create additional livelihood vulnerability
for agricultural households. These resulting disamenities or negative externalities also go beyond
financial and livelihood losses to also include impacts on a more broadly defined well-being
(Nahman, 2011). Landfills can produce additional traffic, noise, odour, litter, dust, and pests in
the surrounding area which are not typically included in statements outlining the costs of landfill
management (Eshet et al., 2005; Nahman, 2011).
On a larger scale, landfills are facilities that enable an economic system and culture that
favours mass production and consumption, which contributes to climate change and
environmental risks that the global population must face. The neoliberal values that fuel our
current economic system encourage “relentless competition and endless accumulation”
(Springer, 2016, 2), reward irresponsible corporate behaviour (Smith, 2009), and have ultimately
given rise to a form of capitalism that is toxic to our physical environment (Van Kerckhove,
2012). Van Kerckhove (2012) describes toxic capitalism as an economic system that encourages
rapid, low quality production of goods and an absent-minded throw-away mentality. They argue
that it “hide[s] behind the mantra of open markets and dubious ideologies”, but is ultimately an
evolution of capitalism that has grave consequences for the environment (Van Kerckhove, 2012,
2). Regardless of whether or not a landfill poses any measurable, objective threats to the
surrounding environment and humans, our culture of mass production of goods and (subsequent)
garbage threatens global resources and sustainability.
The waste management practices that exist in Canada are so effective that we are rarely
(if ever) forced to confront the mass amount of waste we generate daily, making it easy to throw
items away instead of reusing or recycling them (Wilkins, 2017). Mass garbage production

17

contributes to risks far outside of the immediate area surrounding a landfill, threatening earth’s
systems and the global population. The rate of garbage production globally has risen tenfold in
the last century as wealth and technology has increased, and based on global socio-economic
projections, by 2011 we will be throwing away 11 million tonnes per day - most of this will
come from wealthy urban regions (Hoornweg et al., 2013). The anaerobic degradation of this
waste generates greenhouse gases such as methane gas (Hoornweg & Bhada-Tata, 2012), which
contribute to global climate change. However, the actual wasting of most products only accounts
for approximately 5% of the total environmental impact of any material that is produced and
consumed by humans (Hoornweg et al., 2013), and so by encouraging mass consumption
through efficient waste management we are contributing to environmental degradation that goes
far beyond what occurs at a landfill.
Hui Chan (2016) uses Singapore's Semakau Landfill, which has been celebrated for being
an 'eco-dump' for the range of healthy ecosystems it hosts, as an example of the harm a landfill
can do no matter how sanitary it is. While the managers of this landfill have gone to great lengths
to ensure that this landfill is ecologically and economically productive and waste is safely
separated from the environment and humans, it is still a man-made landscape used to hide the
by-products of excessive human consumption and therefore "should evoke remorse and
embarrassment, not celebration" (Hui Chan, 2016, 125). Landfills that boast state-of-the-art
safety measures are certainly beneficial to society and the environment for the level of protection
and convenience they provide, but not all waste management is efficient and safe, and not all
people are adequately protected from the waste we produce regardless of how effective some
landfills are. By celebrating technology that exists in some places that allows us to be more
efficient garbage producers we are perpetuating a dangerous culture of consumption and waste in
all places.

Landfill Siting: What is Fair?
Municipal waste management is a difficult issue. Any society, no matter the size, requires
some method of waste disposal as a means of protecting human and environmental health. With
a larger population, like that of a city, the issue is made more complex due to the sheer volume
of waste being produced and the limited space available. It is also challenging to assign explicit,
18

numerical value to the environment and to a landfill because of the multitude of dynamic, interrelated, and intangible social and cultural resources that may be impacted by environmental
quality and waste management strategies. We could say that landfill planning and urban waste in
general is a wicked problem – one that has no right or wrong solution because ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ depend on socially and politically constructed ideologies and personal ethical values
(Rittel & Webber, 1973; Termeer et al., 2015). Managing municipal waste is not only a wicked
problem because there is no clear solution, but also because the definition of the problem is
unclear (Hui Chan, 2016). It is impossible to do a consistent, “non-anthropocentric valuation” of
the costs and benefits of a landfill because of differing ethics, ideals, and priorities (Zaman &
Lehmann, 2011, 179). This is further complicated by the many socio-economic, political,
environmental, and technological aspects of waste management, all of which have many
stakeholders (Zaman & Lehmann, 2011). Every landfill and its perceived costs and benefits are
“unique, socially constructed, and constantly changing due to many factors at multiple scales”
(Tietjen & Jørgensen, 2016).
Regardless of the academic literature that points to the existence of complex social and
environmental externalities associated with landfills, government strategies continue to focus on
problematic economic approaches to waste management that fail to fully account for social costs
(Ham, Maddison, & Elliott, 2013). From an economics perspective, environmental justice can be
achieved through the financial compensation of those adversely affected by landfill siting, or
those who have chosen to host these sites (see O’Sullivan, 1992), which would help to evenly
distribute the benefits and burdens of a landfill. In the last two decades Canada in particular has
focused heavily on promising jobs and the prospect of investment in an attempt to entice
communities into volunteering to host new waste facilities (Ramana, 2013). Low and Gleeson
(1998) argue that monetary compensation does not account for the complexities of social wellbeing. For example, the loss of culturally or spiritually significant land uses, traditional
landscapes, community autonomy, and dignity cannot be alleviated with money (Endres, 2012;
Porto et al., 2017). This approach also ignores the historic and systematic pressures that may
have led a community to be willing to host a potentially hazardous facility (as explained in
section 3; Ishiyama, 2003). Furthermore, monetary compensation is typically a one-time event,
and does not compensate future community inhabitants and therefore can “entrench
intergenerational inequity” (Low & Gleeson, 1998, 117). The idea of allowing a community to
19

choose to host a landfill sounds like a fair form of land use planning, but it ignores the fact that
knowledge is not often equal between those creating the burden and those living with it. As
explained in section 2.1, discourse can be constructed by those in power to present a particular
set of truths about a land use that fits their interests. Discourse can also be used to supress
alternative views of those land uses and its externalities to minimize resistance to unwanted land
uses (Hudgins & Poole, 2014).

Conclusion
While there are certainly both positive and negative by-products of any waste
management regime, the two are often represented unevenly between social groups and across
space. The literature examined in this report has examined landfills from a political ecology and
environmental justice perspective, focusing on how waste management imposes risks on some
populations and not others, and how these risks impact nearby communities. Unequal power
plays a significant role in landfill siting, as it is a land use implemented by a powerful political
body, imposed upon a community – typically communities that are already marginalized and
have limited power and resources at their disposal. By recognizing the role that power, politics,
and institutional structures play in municipal, provincial, and federal waste management, we can
better understand how and why some people are affected negatively by landfills while others
reap the benefits. The discourse created by those in power about waste management and
environmental change frames how we understand landfills, creating environmental narratives
that can oppress and undermine actors on the ground by providing explanations that are both
overly simplified and overpowering. This has serious implications for local people because these
narratives are used to create environmental policies and practices, which can result not only in a
changing environment but also the changing identities and of those living and working on or near
the land.
Environmental justice discourse recognizes the integral role the environment plays in the
health and well-being of all humans, and the movements that grow from issues of environmental
justice work to create a more equitable distribution of the benefits and risks that our environment
has to offer. The risks, both tangible (e.g. risks to health and safety) and intangible (e.g. cultural
degradation and mental well-being), are difficult to quantify, and attempts to assign numerical
20

values to landfill risks and benefits typically fall short due to differences in ethics, ideals, and
priorities at different scales and in different social, political, and economic spheres. While an
economic perspective on waste management might see financial reimbursement as a fair and just
way of achieving an equal distribution of landfill externalities, this strategy fails to recognize the
historic and structural pressure that might lead a community to become a host to a landfill.
Landfill siting can be understood as a wicked problem – one that has no clear definition or
solution. Wicked as the problem may be, it has very serious impacts on nearby residents, and
political actors at many scales can do more to help alleviate the risks to host communities and
better plan for future waste management systems. Ultimately, though, the problem comes down
to the garbage that we produce and the rapid rate at which we produce it. It could be argued that
no landfill will ever truly be fair and just, and so solutions must focus on the deeper issue –
irresponsible, absent-minded waste production, and the political and economic systems that
facilitate it.

21

Chapter 3: Methodology
While Chilliwack is a medium-sized city with modern, urban landscapes in its core, it is
surrounded by agricultural land and more traditional rural landscapes (Figure 3.1). The study
area includes a 2-km stretch of road (Bailey Road) in southeastern Chilliwack. The north side of
the road houses several farms that vary considerably in size, productivity, and produce grown.
On the southwest side of the road is a portion of Tzeachten First Nation reserve land. Bailey
Road exists on the cusp of these two environments – not entirely rural, and only a short drive
from the city’s core. The dynamic set of land uses and the presence of First Nation, municipal,
and private land along Bailey Road are reflective of its unique position between two distinctly

Figure 3.1: Map of Chilliwack, BC. City limits are indicated by the dotted red line, and the study
area for this research is outlined in solid red. The bulk of urban land uses and dense populations
exist within a relatively narrow central strip. The majority of land in Chilliwack is used for
agriculture and related activities. Image was created using the City of Chilliwack online
mapping application (City of Chilliwack, 2017).
22

different worlds. These land uses are also representative of the important historic factors that
have created its landscape. This location was chosen because of its dynamic set of land uses that
allow for an examination of multiple perspectives from diverse social groups. To understand
local perceptions of risk and disamenities this research employed a qualitative approach
comprising semi-structured interviews and a discourse analysis. Semi-structured interviews with
key actors (n=16) accessed via door-to-door recruitment, and a discourse analysis of municipal
documents and newspaper articles was conducted to uncover local voices excluded from
municipal narratives (Forsyth, 2004). Interview respondents were chosen for their social and/or
economic investment in Bailey Road, comprising diverse community groups included Tzeachten
First Nation band members living on Bailey Road (n=9), Tzeachten First Nation employees
working at the Tzeachten Sports Field (n=2), agricultural households living on Bailey Road
(n=5), and the City of Chilliwack (n=1). Conducting interviews with a variety of actors, allows
for an understanding of the Bailey Landfill and Bailey Road that encompasses different
perspectives and environmental identities. While the sample size used for this analysis is
adequate for qualitative research, especially considering the relatively small number of
individuals who fit the recruitment criteria, no statistical analysis can be drawn from interview
data.
Participant recruitment and data collection occurred between July and August of 2017,
shortly after receiving approval from both the University of the Fraser Valley’s Human Research
Ethics Board and Tzeachten First Nation’s Chief and Council. All research participants have
some tie to Bailey Road, and therefore the Bailey Landfill beyond simply living in the area. This
chapter will discuss the research methods, provide justifications for their use, and discuss their
limitations. It is important to consider the implications of this research, and how the ways in
which research is conducted can negatively impact the communities involved. This is
particularly true for geographical research involving Indigenous populations. The discipline of
geography has deep colonial routes (AAG IPSG, 2010), has historically been exploitative and
oppressive, and has a reputation for imposing western values and conceptualizations onto
Indigenous peoples (Smith, 2013). This research attempts to question the powerful structures that
determine environmental attitudes and expert knowledge. Without also questioning and being
introspective about the ways that universities do research, produce knowledge, and promote
particular values and conceptualizations, this research could reflect the very structures that it is
23

criticizing. This chapter begins with a discussion of the partnership between Tzeachten First
Nation and the primary researcher, and why these partnerships are integral to any research
involving Indigenous peoples. A detailed account of the methods used for collecting data will
follow, and the chapter will close with an exploration of future research methods and
recommendations.

Tzeachten First Nation Partnership
Beyond the involvement of Indigenous peoples for data collection, this research sought to
directly compare Indigenous responses with powerful, municipal narratives. The research has
potential policy implications for the Tzeachten community because it is explicitly criticising land
use planning and policies, municipal authorities, and the City’s means of communication and
knowledge dissemination. Because of this, special care was taken to involve Tzeachten First
Nation in all steps of the research and interpretation of results. Central to this research are
considerations of the perceptions of risk, conceptualizations of health and well-being, and
environmental attitudes, with particular focus on how Indigenous peoples frame their own
knowledge about the environment, and how they understand their level of risk and their health.
In this way, the primary researcher attempted to remove their own understandings and biases to
allow room for different value sets to come to light. For this project, the role of primary
researcher (PR) is meant to facilitate the spread of local and Indigenous knowledge.
The PR is both an insider and an outsider to the communities involved in this research.
They have personal relationships to both Tzeachten First Nations band member as well as
farmers living on Bailey Road. They have become acquainted with many of Tzeachten First
Nation’s community members and individuals working within the band administration over
several years, and therefore have a more personal relationship to the research topic, study area,
and potential participants than if they were coming in as a complete outsider with no contextual
background or established relationships. These personal relationships that have been developed
over several years provided the PR with a base understanding of the social and cultural structures
of Tzeachten First Nation, which heavily influenced the methodologies of this research. For
example, through personal communications with Tzeachten band members it was learned that
face-to-face communication with individual band members is preferred to phone calls, emails, or

24

letters because the latter can reflect the cold, disingenuous means of communication that
governments use when communicating with First Nations. Research methods that are not
sensitive to the challenging relationships between many Indigenous peoples and government
bodies can result in similarly challenging relationships between a researcher and a First Nation
community. Alternatively, face-to-face communication requires the researcher to travel to a
person’s home and meet them for recruitment purposes, demonstrating a higher level of
dedication and effort, as well as a willingness to engage on a more personal level. Without prior
knowledge of these perspectives that many Tzeachten band members share, the methods used for
recruiting participants may have been different and potentially insensitive.
Despite personal ties to Tzeachten First Nation, the PR is a non-Indigenous person and
took steps to be reflective of their position as an outsider to the community, and to take
responsibility for the ethical obligations they have to the community. The involvement of
Tzeachten First Nation and its community members were made a priority throughout the
duration of the data collection, analysis, and composition of the project. This process involved
ongoing collaboration with Tzeachten First Nation, and considering key questions put forth by
the Association of American Geographers Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group (AAG IPSG,
2010). As the AAG IPSG (2010) document states, Indigenous communities are capable of
determining their own research needs, and this understanding was a key part of formulating
research questions and methods. Throughout the study period the PR made themselves available
to the Chief and band council, and the entire Tzeachten community to ensure an open and honest
line of communication. This included formal approval of research methods from Chief and
Council in June, 2017, ongoing communications with Tzeachten First Nation and their Chief to
determine an appropriate level of consultation, and attendance at a community band meeting in
September 2017 to present a summary of research findings to attending community members.
Attendance to the September band meeting was meant to allow Tzeachten band members the
opportunity to meet face-to-face with the PR, ask questions about the research, and correct any
incorrect interpretations of the results. This was also an opportunity for band members to discuss
the implications of this research, and what they would like to do with the final results.

Field Work and Data Collection
25

Qualitative research methods, and interviews in particular, are ideal for investigating
complex issues experienced by many different people with potentially differing perspectives and
perceptions. Thus, these methods can provide more insight than quantitative methods – although
this also means that their scope is limited, as the results cannot be generalized to a larger
population (Hay, 2010). The primary aim of this research was to investigate the different
perspectives of Bailey Road stakeholders in order to dissect the complex historic and political
factors that have created its landscape, and therefore quantitative methods would not have been
appropriate. One-on-one interviews with local people can uncover voices that otherwise go
unnoticed or are silenced by oppressive processes such as dominant government or societal
narratives (Sportel & Véron, 2016). Additionally, these methods help reveal how powerful
political structures affect people on the ground in their daily lives (Forsyth, 2008). Semistructured interviews, which were the primary interview method for this research, make use of a
flexible interview guide as opposed to a strict set of questions, which allows participants more
control over the direction and depth of an interview (Hay, 2010).
Structured interviews, with their strict set of questions, can create boundaries around the
conversation between the interviewer and participants, limiting their ability to discuss issues that
have not been considered by the interviewer. This is important because a significant part of this
research was intended to uncover local voices that otherwise are less likely to have a platform to
express their concerns. Because local voices are can be silenced for the sake of a narrative put
forth by those in power (Forsyth, 2004; Bixler, 2013), the PR was unaware of the ways in which
the Bailey Landfill impact Bailey Road residents. Therefore, interview questions that presume to
know what these impacts are would be based on the PR’s pre-existing assumptions and biases.
This would be problematic, and could result in biased interview questions that lead participants
to pre-determined desired conclusions. Therefore, interviews were constructed in a way that
allowed participants to steer the conversation however they saw fit, questions were left relatively
broad, and participants were encouraged to speak freely about anything they thought was
relevant. Interviews were concluded by asking participants if any important topics were omitted,
allowing them an opportunity to either raise additional details, or reiterate anything that they felt

26

Figure 3.2: Study area separated by land use. Agricultural residences with Bailey Road
addresses as well as Tzeachten residences with Bailey Road addresses were the primary focus of
participant recruitment. However, some participants were recruited from the Tzeachten Sports
Field. Image was created using Google Earth and property data from the City of Chilliwack's
online mapping application (City of Chilliwack, 2017).
was particularly important. Typically, these interviews lasted 40 minutes, although they varied
depending on the level of detail provided.
Participants were chosen primarily based on the location of their home and the activities
that occur on their property. Figure 3.2 shows the locations of important land types related to
Bailey Road, including Tzeachten First Nation reserve land and the Bailey Landfill. However,
only Tzeachten households with Bailey Road addresses were contacted for this research, as band
members living elsewhere are less likely to experience the negative impacts of the Bailey
27

Landfill directly. Similarly, only farmers with residential housing and Bailey Road addresses
were contacted. Many of the households along Bailey Road were neither Indigenous nor
agricultural in nature (i.e., non-Indigenous, non-farming households), and so they were not asked
to participate in an interview. While these households may experience similar landfill
disamenities, this research was seeking the opinions and experiences of households with ties to
the environment that go beyond housing. Furthermore, Tzeachten First Nation employees were
asked to participate in interviews. These two employees were chosen due to the location of their
offices at the Tzeachten Sports Field, and their involvement with the organization and execution
of both community events and external field rentals at the sports field. While these employees do
not live on Bailey Road and therefore do not experience its impacts to the same level as Bailey
Road residents, they provided an interesting perspective on the facility. Their perspectives were
an intersection of Indigenous social and cultural values and the economic interests of Tzeachten
First Nation.
Households located within the green and salmon coloured areas in figure 3.2 were the
primary focus of participant recruitment. In July 2017, after received ethical approval and
approval from Tzeachten First Nation, the PR went door-to-door to every household in the
determined study area to introduce themselves and the research, and ask for the participation of
residents. If residents agreed to participate, they were able to choose a date, time, and place for
the interview to take place. Most participants requested that interviews occur in their home,
although two interviews took place in a private office at the Tzeachten Sports Field, with the
permission of Tzeachten staff. In cases where no one was home to answer the door, a letter of
invitation was left (typically under their doormat) with contact information and a summary of the
research. The PR went back to these houses a second, final time to request participation.
Residents who agreed to participate in an interview were given a consent form that detailed the
methods and intent of the research and their rights as a participant, which every participant
signed. Additionally, participants had to be at least 19 years of age to provide legal consent.
These interviews were held in private, except in cases where other family members were
present (e.g. some participants had young children home, others participated in joint interviews
with their spouse or adult children). Multiple individuals from one household could participate in
a single interview, which was often the case for both groups. Of the five farmers that participated

28

in this research, there were two married couples that provided responses together. Similarly, one
interview included three Tzeachten band members who were directly related. This interview was
more similar to a small focus group rather than a one-on-one interviews, as the three family
members often spoke to each other and elaborated on and responded to each other’s answers.
The strong family ties on Bailey Road was a recurring theme in this research. Many Indigenous
residents are related to each other, and respondents often spoke about their family members (who
were also their neighbours in many cases) in their retelling of their history and their experiences
with the City of Chilliwack. This reflected strong ties to the physical environment through shared
family histories, and it meant that Indigenous respondents shared many of the same perspectives
and experiences. In some ways this could be viewed as a limitation of the research, as Indigenous
responses do not include the thoughts and experiences of a variety of Tzeachten families from
other locations on and off reserve. However, these homogenous responses juxtaposed with the
more varied farmer responses are an important result in their own right, and will be discussed in
Chapters Four and Five.
An interview from the City of Chilliwack municipal government was requested in order to
compare this with local perceptions of risk and disamenities. As part of the ethical approval
process of these methods, the PR received written approval from the City of Chilliwack to
interview municipal employees. However, an interview could only be conducted with one
employee, the same employee that provided this approval. They indicated that other municipal
government employees outside of their department were unlikely to have enough information to
provide a response, and employees within their department were unlikely to have information
that differed significantly. This was an unfortunate limitation of the research – the original intent
was to interview a group of municipal authorities that would ideally create a cohesive municipal
narrative that could be compared to local responses. Therefore, the municipal narrative discussed
in future chapters is the product of only one municipal authority. That being said, this person
identified themselves as the appropriate authority on the Bailey Landfill, and their response
represents the perspective of the City of Chilliwack.
In addition to the limited sample size, this interview also took place via email. The PR
provided interview questions, and a written response was returned several weeks later. This form
of communication limited the ability to ask follow-up questions due to the nature of email

29

communications. First, written communications, despite the advent of high-speed internet,
consume much more time than a face-to-face conversation. The initial interview questions were
sent in early July, and a response was not received until August 25, 2017. This is not necessarily
a criticism – it is common knowledge that government communications can take long periods of
time simply due to the large volume of emails and phone calls public servants receive daily. An
undergraduate student seeking a lengthy written response from a government authority on a
sensitive issue is not likely to experience the quickest turnaround. This was, to some extent,
expected. However, due to the short data collection period, this slow communication made it
extremely difficult to ask for elaborations, clarifications, and follow-up questions. This also
means that any responses from the City can be carefully crafted, whereas face-to-face
communication has the potential to be more candid and honest. Furthermore, email
communications eliminate non-verbal communication. There is no way to gauge body language
or tone of voice through an email.
Because the City requested that interview questions be provided before field work began, it
was not possible to rework interview questions to include issues raised in interviews by Bailey
Road residents, or to engage in a follow-up interview after more data collection had taken place.
The questions received by the city were constructed before any interviews had taken place and
thus before the PR had in-depth knowledge of the challenges faced by Bailey Road residents.
Therefore, the interview questions were limited. Furthermore, because this research utilized
semi-structured interviews as its primary form of data collection, interview questions were
relatively broad and meant to be starting points for a more in-depth discussion of the Bailey
landfill. Because the city employee agreed to provide written responses to these broader
questions, there was not the same opportunity for elaborations and in-depth discussion compared
to the face-to-face interviews with Bailey Road residents. Whether these limitations in
communication were intentional or not, they certainly impacted the results of this research.
Finally, a discourse analysis and archival research was used to examine the political
narratives and historical factors that have shaped Bailey Road. An analysis of texts from actors in
power (i.e. municipal publications, website and social media posts, and landfill reports) was
utilized to explore the political context of the Bailey Landfill, and understand how environmental
knowledge is being constructed by those in power, and who is considered an expert (Hay, 2010;

30

Forsyth, 2004). This included an examination of City of Chilliwack’s official website and
official municipal documents found through their website and web searches. The combination of
discourse analysis and written response from the City of Chilliwack produced a particular
narrative that framed the Bailey Landfill as being beneficial and harmless to all Chilliwack
residents. This narrative was then compared with the results from local interviews to uncover
knowledge gaps, differences in conceptualizations of risk and disamenities, and whose
knowledge is being favoured over others. Archival research was conducted using The Chilliwack
Progress’s archives and the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre. These resources
were immeasurably beneficial to this research, as they provided information that was integral to
understanding Bailey Road in a historic context. Without clear understandings of the history of
the lower Fraser Valley region, especially from an Indigenous perspective, it is impossible to
fully appreciate the implications of the Bailey Landfill and how it impacts local people.

Future Research Recommendations
The involvement of Tzeachten First Nation and Tzeachten band members was limited for a
variety of reason, with short time constraints being a significant factor. The short timeframe for
data collection was initially planned for three months, but due to the processes involved in
obtaining ethical approval it was reduced to two months. The PR’s established relationship with
Tzeachten First Nation was pivotal to complete the research in a timely manner. Without a
previously established relationship it would have been challenging to build one, which would
have limited the research and made it impossible to complete the data collection and analysis as
planned. Raising this point is in no way a criticism of ethical research methodologies involving
Indigenous peoples or the processes involved in receiving ethical approval for research involving
human participants. This phase of relationship building is important when conducting research
with First Nations communities due to historically colonial, exploitative institutional research
methods – to bypass this step would be to move backwards in the flow of progressive research
ethics. Furthermore, taking time to build relationships and trust, and create strong connections
within a community can create a greater capacity to access local knowledge that might otherwise
be hidden (Elliot, 2011). This is, however, a criticism of the limited time frames given to student
researchers, as well as the ways in which universities produce of barriers that restrict researchers’
31

abilities to work with communities (Sylvestre, 2017). This is particularly true for undergraduate
research, where there are significant constraints and little resources to facilitate meaningful
research. With longer time frames and more resources this research could have done a better job
engaging with the community that this research depended on.
Future research on the Bailey Landfill or even the City of Chilliwack more generally
would ideally be more strongly rooted in participatory, community-led research. Participating
community members would have the opportunity to create their own research questions and
methodologies based on the expert knowledge that they already have. Furthermore, participants
would have ample opportunity to aid in the interpretation of results, while researchers would
strictly be there to facilitate this process by providing university resources and research skills.
The role of researcher would be to create space for silenced voices (Smith, 2013). In this
scenario, university knowledge is paired with local knowledge as its equal. These methodologies
would work to decolonize and decentralize research methodologies and give the power of
creating knowledge to local people who have traditionally been exploited by researchers
(Drabble et al., 2013). Furthermore, involving communities as partners rather than research
subjects is more likely to produce meaningful, sustainable change (Sylvestre et al., 2017). With
this approach to academic research, both the community and the researcher benefit (Creswell,
2007). These methods can also open up the possibility for local action to take place. In this case,
the communities involved in research are able to act in their own interested to correct the
challenges or injustices that they face. For example, the PR could have done more to facilitate
the organization of Tzeachten band members and the dissemination of research conclusions in a
way that would have forced the City to listen and correct their problematic methods of waste
management and communication. Ultimately, though, this would be up to the community in
question.

32

Chapter 4: Bailey Road Landscapes
Bailey Road is a unique landscape with many different land uses, operated by a diverse set
of land users, existing in a relatively small space. This 2-km road is the location of 13 farms,
approximately 30 residential homes, Tzeachten First Nation reserve land, the Tzeachten Sports
Field, and the Bailey Landfill. This area has experienced profound changes since Europeans
began settling here; changes that can be understood as a reflection of the rapid urbanization and
growth of non-indigenous populations in Chilliwack over the last century. European settlement
pushed indigenous peoples from their traditional lands and food sources, dramatically altered the
physical landscape (Carlson, 2000), and separated important social and cultural ties between
First Nations by constructing reserves with little regard for traditional tribes and families
(Kostuchenko, 2012). This was done to facilitate the growth of modern, European cities in the
Fraser Valley and has had serious economic, social, and cultural implications for Chilliwack
First Nations. For Tzeachten First Nation, this has meant that their reserve land does not
necessarily reflect their traditional lands. Furthermore, the location of their reserve is no longer
tied to important, traditional bodies of water because the provincial government drained and
rerouted important water systems (Stó:lō Nation News, 1989).
These historical factors in the late 19th and early 20th century set the stage for the
aggressive, paternalistic economic developments pursued by the provincial over the next century.
The new provincial government pushed for agricultural expansion to facilitate European
settlement and the increased production and consumption of goods to stimulate new economic
systems. These changes did not occur alongside Indigenous livelihoods, but despite them.
Economic development and eventual urban and suburban growth, particularly in Southern British
Columbia, has virtually eliminated Indigenous peoples’ capacity to practice the traditional
livelihoods that have supported them for thousands of years (Sewell & Biswas, 1986; McCully,
1996). The changing physical and economic environments also produced a need for large-scale
waste disposal sites to cope with the growing non-Indigenous population throughout the 20th
century. Today, Bailey Road and the Bailey Landfill can be understood as an important case
study in the ways in which rapidly changing environments and aggressive, colonial
developments have impacted Indigenous peoples in complex ways.

33

This history is also responsible for a key difference between Indigenous residents and
farmers: their contrasting relationships to the physical environment. The long history of
Indigenous settlement provides Tzeachten band members a shared background tied to the
physical environment – their relationship to the land has been connected to social, cultural, and
livelihood practices throughout their shared history whereas farmers moved here more recently
and primarily for better livelihood opportunities. Therefore, the relationships that these two
groups have to their land differ significantly, and this is reflected in their feelings about the
Bailey Landfill and the City of Chilliwack. This chapter provides an historical context for
Chilliwack and the Bailey Landfill, establishing the foundation for an analysis of these different
relationships to the land and the complex social, cultural, and economic implications of Bailey
Road in Chapter 5. Over time, particularly in the 1960s and 70s, agricultural land in Chilliwack
has been reduced to allow for more urban and industrial development (Evans, 2013; Audit of the
Agricultural Land Commission, 2014). At the same time, First Nations in the Fraser Valley have
seen the size of their reserves reduced by 91% since the original James Douglas reserves
proposed in the 1860s (Carlson, 2000). While the City of Chilliwack and governments at several
scales have prioritized economic development as a means of bettering the lives of Chilliwack
residents, some social groups have been marginalized and neglected in the process. The power
that municipal, provincial, and federal governments have exerted (and continue to exert) over
local people, both indigenous and non-indigenous, has resulted in the tense relationships that
exist today.

First Nations in the Fraser Valley
Chilliwack’s history cannot be separated from Indigenous histories in B.C. The rapid
population growth, economic development, and urbanization of Chilliwack would not have been
possible without the policies and practices that pushed Indigenous peoples on to marginal
environments. By controlling the physical landscape via resource extraction, rerouting water
systems, and establishing reserve systems the colonial government was able to control
Indigenous peoples. Reserves were particularly integral to the expansion of European settlement,
as it created small, restrictive boundaries around where Indigenous peoples could exist and left
everything else open to Colonial development (Harris, 2004). Today, ten First Nation bands of
34

various sizes, histories, and socio-political organizations exist within Chilliwack’s city boundary.
The Fraser River, which runs through Chilliwack, was a key resource for indigenous peoples due
to the plentiful fish populations – specifically salmon, which made up a significant part of the
economies and cultural practices of interior plateau and coastal Indigenous groups (Garner &
Parfitt, 2006; Muckle, 2014). Archaeological data shows that early indigenous settlement
patterns in British Columbia often followed the Fraser River (Ritchie et al., 2016), and this is
reflected in the relatively high proportion of Indigenous peoples and the number of First Nation
bands in Chilliwack and the larger lower Fraser River region.
The lower Fraser River region has been the location of Indigenous occupation, particularly
by the Stó:lō people, for roughly 10,000 years. It was not until the late 18th century that
Europeans made contact with this areas Indigenous population (Carlson, 2000). Initially, the
relationship between European explorers and many Indigenous peoples in B.C. was defined by
explorers’ dependence on Indigenous peoples for survival, and as a result explorers often
conformed to the social and economic norms of their hosts to maintain positive, productive
relationships (Carlson, 2000; Thomson & Ignace, 2005). However, the gold rush in 1858 led to
rapid immigration into B.C. and, in less than a year, towns and roads were developed with
virtually no consideration for the region’s existing Indigenous population (Oliver, 2010). The
massive immigration of new settlers and miners severely impacted Indigenous access to the
natural environment and their traditional resources, largely due to gold miners rapidly (and
legally1) claiming land along the Fraser River (Carlson, 2000). In addition to these land claims,
miners also began removing large sections of the river bank in search of gold, leaving permanent
scars on the land and impacting the health and sustainability of the rivers ecosystems (Carlson,
2000). In 1873, only 15 years after the start of the gold rush, Chilliwack became a fully
incorporated municipality (Duff, 1952). By the mid-1900s the Fraser Valley had become a
productive agricultural countryside, facilitated by a simple system through which settlers could
acquire ownership of large plots of land so long as they developed it in some way, typically via
agricultural use (Oliver, 2000).

1

Legality in this context refers to the Canadian government’s legal systems at the time. First Nations have had
their own concepts of land ownership and rights long before colonial settlement. Based on Indigenous legal
systems, the rapid non-Indigenous land acquisition that defined early Canadian history would certainly not be
considered legal or just.

35

During this period of non-Indigenous growth in B.C., the province did not finalize treaties2
with Indigenous peoples as the Royal Proclamation required them to. The process of establishing
treaties was seen as too expensive and time consuming, and most government officials and
European settlers did not like the idea of allowing Indigenous peoples legal ownership over large
plots of valuable land (Carlson, 2000). Land was the most valuable resource that a colonial
government could secure in the 19th century, and large reserve lands and finalized treaties would
have eliminated their ability to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their sacred spaces (Harris,
2004). Initially, between 1850 and 1854, Governor James Douglas allowed Indigenous tribes
some autonomy in the creation of their reserves, although consultation was problematic due to a
general lack of understanding of the process3 and an unwillingness to share spiritually significant
spaces with colonial officers (Carlson, 2000; Rafter, 2000). In the latter half of the 19th century,
settlers and colonial officials called for an investigation of some of the original Douglas treaties
that had been proposed because they felt that they were unfairly benefiting Indigenous peoples,
and argued that this interfered with B.C.’s potential for development (Crockford, 2010). This
resistance, in combination with the appointment of Joseph Trutch as the Commissioner of Lands
and Works, resulted in unfinished treaties and reserves lands across the province being reduced
in size by 91% (Carlson, 2000). These restrictive reserves and growing colonial landscapes
meant that many Indigenous peoples had no choice but to turn to capitalist endeavors for
survival, which has had long lasting effects on their traditional modes of production and cultural
practices. Today, these issues have yet to be resolved and many First Nations (including
Tzeachten) are still in the process of negotiating treaties.
Political Autonomy and Fracturing the Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe
Before European settlement, Tzeachten was a component of the larger Ts’elxwéyeqw
(Chilliwack) Tribe, which in turn was part of Stó:lō Nation4. Before B.C. became a colony, the

2

By the 1850s, a small section of Vancouver Island had been ceded, but no treaties on the mainland were
completed until the 1998 Nisga’a Treaty (Foster, 2009).
3
Many Indigenous peoples did not understand why they were being asked about reserve location and size when,
based on their own understanding of land ownership and the long history of Indigenous occupation in the region,
they already had rights to the land (Rafter, 2000).
4
However, the social, political, and cultural customs of the First Nations that once made up the Chilliwack Tribe
differed from other tribes within Stó:lō Nation. This is because the Chilliwack Tribe, historically, has not always

36

Chilliwack Tribe was located primarily along the Chilliwack River. However, this changed
dramatically when the colonial government began implementing the reserve system
(Kostuchenko, 2012). In the original Douglas reserves, the Chilliwack reserve was one large,
continuous area for what are now Tzeachten, Skowkale, Yakweakwioose, and Soowahlie First
Nations (Kostuchenko, 2012). Not long after James Douglas’ retirement in 1864, Joseph Trutch
was put in charge of readjusting the original Douglas reserves due largely to backlash from
European settlers who claimed that Douglas reserves were too large (Crockford, 2010). Trutch
did not share the same views on Indigenous land rights as the former governor - while Douglas
had stressed the importance of involving Indigenous leaders and families in the creation of their
reserves, Trutch did not understand why Indigenous peoples should be given legal ownership of
large sections of land that (to his understanding) would be left mostly vacant and undeveloped
(Carlson, 2000). As a result, the only people consulted during this reassessment were European
settlers who had been vocal about their dislike for the large Douglas reserves, and the Chilliwack
reserve was reduced in size by more than 60%5 (Carlson, 2016).
This reduction in reserve size essentially wiped out Tzeachten, leaving reserve land only
for Skowkale, Yakweakwioose, and Soowahlie, which were now geographically separated from
one another (Stó:lō Nation News, 1989). The separation of these reserves strained important
social networks and decentralized the political power and leadership of the Chilliwack Tribe,
creating three distinct, independent First Nations (Kostuchenko, 2012). However, because of the
major reduction in size, the Skowkale and Yakweakwioose reserves quickly became
overcrowded and another small section of reserve land was set aside for the common use of both
these First Nations in 1879 (Rafter, 2000; Kostuchenko, 2012). This new plot of land, located
along Bailey Road, would later become the new home of Tzeachten First Nation. Families soon
began moving onto this land, with the permission of Skowkale and Yakweakwioose leaders, and
in the late 1890s the first Tzeachten Chief, Billie Hall, was appointed by government officials
(Rafter, 2000; Kostuchenko, 2012). This appointment of a Chief that was recognized by the
Canadian government worked to further separate Tzeachten politically and socially from the rest
been a true member of Stó:lō Nation like other First Nations in the lower Fraser River region (Hill-tout & Maud,
1978).
5
In 1864 the Chilliwack reserve was approximately 11800 acres. After the 1868 reduction, the Chilliwack reserve
was only 2480 hectares. As of 2016, the size of all reserve land belonging to First Nations that once made up the
Chilliwack Tribe is 3958 acres (Carlson, 2016).

37

of what was once the Chilliwack Tribe, but it also created tensions between Tzeachten,
Skowkale, and Yakweakwioose. First, Chief Billie Hall was not elected by Indigenous peoples,
which was unusual for any First Nation, and so this was an example of the colonial government
imposing leadership on to Indigenous peoples. It was also still unclear whether or not band
members from Skowkale and Yakweakwioose should be allowed to vote on Tzeachten issues.
These concerns were resolved due to the 1895 census that counted Tzeachten band members as
separate from the others, further reinforcing that Tzeachten was its own autonomous First Nation
recognized at a federal level (Kostuchenko, 2012). This, too, was an example of decision making
being in the hands of a colonial government, removing power from Indigenous peoples.
Finally, in 1964, Skowkale and Yakweakwioose relinquished all rights to Tzeachten, and it
officially became an independent First Nation recognized by Canada (Kostuchenko, 2012).
Today, the First Nations that made up the Chilliwack Tribe are geographically separated by not
only the physical space between their reserve lands (Figure 4.1), but also the varying degrees of
urbanization in Chilliwack that has severed important transportation routes and cultural

Figure 4.1: Location of Skowkale, Yakweakwioose, Tzeachten, and Soowahlie reserve lands.
Source: Government of Canada. (2012). First Nation Profiles Interactive Map. Retrieved from
http://cippn-fnpim.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/index-eng.html

38

pathways. They are also isolated by their own autonomy. The Chilliwack Tribe splitting in to
four distinct First Nations, in combination with their physically separated reserve lands, has
created challenges in their ability to govern cooperatively and work towards common goals. This
separation has also fractured their sense of community by disconnecting people within and
between different families. This is a significant challenge that is faced by the larger Indigenous
population in the region. There are many independent First Nations existing in the lower Fraser
River region that would have once been connected politically, socially, and culturally. Being
autonomous has ultimately undermined Indigenous peoples’ ability to self-govern, has broken
important social and familial ties, and has led to many First Nations having an “unhealthy codependency” on the Department of Indian Affairs due to their fractured political and social
resources (Carlson, 2007, 9). Had Tzeachten, Skowkale, Yakweakwioose, and Soowahlie been
allotted the large, continuous plot of land recommended by the original Douglas treaties (or
better yet, had they not been forced on to reserve lands at all), there would be a greater capacity
for band members to govern collectively, pool resources, and maintain important social ties
today. Thusthe reserve system can be understood as a colonial method of controlling Indigenous
peoples by controlling the environment and Indigenous spaces.
The reserve system was one of many ways in which government officials controlled the
environment to suit their desires. They also physically altered the geography of the region in
order to create more agricultural land and settle the perceived wild landscapes of B.C., and by
doing so they cut off Indigenous peoples’ access to important resources. The traditional
headquarters of the Tzeachten people was along a water system that is now the Vedder River6.
This river and the former Sumas Lake connected to it was used by Indigenous peoples for
transportation, and it was an important spawning route for salmon, and supported many bird,
plant, and animal populations (Carlson, 2000; Woods, 2001). Sumas lake was drained completed
in the 1920s, the Vedder River was rerouted, and some other connecting water ways dried up
entirely as a result (Duff, 1952; Stó:lō Nation News, 1989). Government officials used carefully
crafted statements to frame the draining of Sumas Lake as being a means to control the insects
that, to them, appeared to plague the area - it was a reclamation of an otherwise useless area
(Woods, 2001). To European settlers, Sumas Lake was a wasteland. The government
6

Hence the name “Tzeachten”, meaning home of the fish weir. This refers to the many fish weirs that could be
seen along this water system where Tzeachten was traditionally located.

39

transformed the physical environment to reflect what Europeans found comfortable and familiar,
and in doing so believed that they were also improving the lives of Indigenous peoples (Carlson,
2000). To the hundreds of Indigenous peoples living near the lake and its connecting water
systems7, this was an ecological tragedy that left them without adequate fish populations (Stó:lō
Nation News, 1989; Carlton, 2000).
In roughly 150 years this region has been completed remade in terms of land use,
settlement and migration patterns, and modes of production. Where Indigenous peoples of the
lower Fraser River region once practised hunting and gathering and semi-mobile settlement,
there is now a dense, highly urbanized, sedentary population supported in part by agriculture as
well as the diverse economic development of the Greater Vancouver region. Changes that took
thousands of years in Europe occurred in less than two centuries in this region. Both Indigenous
peoples and the physical environment have suffered irreparable damage, imposed upon them by
an uncaring colonial government that was too preoccupied with mimicking rural British society
to consider the long-term implications for the societies already settled here (Oliver, 2010). The
City of Chilliwack continues to benefit from their colonial histories, enjoying relatively
unimpeded power over a region that only a few centuries ago did not exist to Europeans.

Municipal Waste through Time
Today, Chilliwack is a medium size city located approximately 80 kilometres east of the
Greater Vancouver region (Figure 4.2). The city can be described as both urban and rural, with
relatively dense urban development considering its size (approximately 84,000 people; Statistics
Canada, 2016), sprawling suburban neighbourhoods, and a rural countryside used largely for
intensive agriculture. Despite the sprawling urban and suburban landscapes, agricultural
activities still make up a significant part of both the city’s economic activity (Chilliwack
Agricultural Commission, 2017; Golder Associates, 2013), and land use with 64% or 16,941
hectares of Chilliwack’s total land cover being part of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) (BC

7

Sumas First Nation, located primarily in Abbotsford, B.C., was impacted most severely by these events. They were
traditionally located around Sumas Lake and utilized the many resources that the lake offered. Tzeachten and
other nearby First Nations were impacted more by the downstream, spin-off effects of the draining.

40

Figure 4.2: Map of British Columbia’s lower Fraser River. Source: Google Inc. (2017).
Ministry of Agriculture, 2015; See figure 4.3). While there was a period in the 1960s and 70s
where agricultural land was being transformed for more diverse economic purposes (Evans,
2013; Audit of the Agricultural Land Commission, 2014), strict regulations have protected much
of the capacity for food production here. Agriculture in Chilliwack is comparable to the most
productive agricultural land in the country (BC Ministry of Agriculture, 2015), demonstrating the
regions strong ties to livelihoods and lifestyles rooted in the natural environment. Additionally,
Chilliwack has a relatively high Indigenous population, and a higher proportion of Indigenous
peoples than the province8, which is reflective of the rich history of Indigenous peoples living in
southern B.C. long before European settlement (Carlson, 2000).
The city’s population has grown by 33% since the start of the century9, which is higher
than the provincial growth rate of 19% for the same time period10. With this significant rise in
population, the city has also seen a considerable increase in both housing sales and housing
prices (Chilliwack Real Estate Board, 2017; Henderson, 2016), likely due to the rising cost of
living in the Greater Vancouver region that has forced some to move further east and prospective

8

Chilliwack’s indigenous population is 8340 or 9.2% of its total population compared to 5.4% for all of British
Columbia (Statistics Canada, 2011).
9
From 62,927 in 2001 to 83,788 in 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2016a; City of Chilliwack, 2008)
10
From 3,907,738 in 2001 to 4,648,055 in 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2001; Statistics Canada, 2016b)

41

Figure 4.3: Map of Agricultural Reserve Land in Chilliwack. Source: City of Chilliwack.
(2016c). On-line Mapping: Land Use/Zoning. Retrieved from http://maps.chilliwack.com/b/
(Accessed May 18, 2017).
residents to buy farther from Vancouver (Henderson, 2017; Lovgreen, 2017). British Columbia
as a whole has experienced fairly steady growth in both its economy and population in the 19th
and 20th century with increased resource exploitation and the spread of capitalist systems
globally and locally (Robinson, 2010). Capitalism and rapid consumerism, while they can bring
wealth and prosperity to some regions, encourage a system of rapid production of goods and an
unsustainable level of waste production (Silva et al., 2017). As population, regional wealth, and
per-capita incomes grow, so does the need for efficient waste disposal (Bruce et al., 2016;
Kirkman & Voulvoulis, 2017). Residents generate an average of 2.5 kilograms of waste per
capita every day in B.C. and Canada is one of the worst industrialized nations in the world in
terms of solid waste generation (Bruce et al., 2016). As Chilliwack has become a more modern,
dense city the need for a city-wide means of disposing waste has grown.
42

The Bailey Landfill was among three waste disposal sites in Chilliwack in the 1950s to
70s, and the only one to remain open to this day (Chilliwack Progress, 1974a). These three sites
were used for personal garbage disposal as there was no city-wide system of garbage collection
and disposal, they were also relatively unregulated and residents were able to burn their waste
openly on site (Chilliwack Progress, 1974b; 1974c). In 1974, the provincial government required
municipalities across B.C. to either close down or transition existing unregulated waste disposal
sites into sanitary landfills to better protect the environment and human populations from
pollution (Chilliwack Progress, 1974a). The two other sites, located in Yarrow and Rosedale, did
not meet the requirements for transitioning into a sanitary landfill because they were located in
flood plains. Therefore the Bailey Road location was the only existing waste disposal site that
could remain open assuming the necessary changes were made by the City of Chilliwack
(Chilliwack Progress, 1974b). Additionally, the land surrounding the Bailey Landfill was much
less developed than it is today. This meant that transitioning it into a sanitary landfill would have
few obvious social implications at the time. Promontory Hill, currently a highly developed
suburban community located just south of Bailey Road, was still a rural landscape with few
residential properties. The First Nations reserve that shares a western border with the landfill was
also undeveloped land at this time, and the northern edge of the landfill was much farther from
Bailey Road than it is today. Figures 4.4 and 4.5 show how the south side of Bailey Road looked
in 1983, nine years after the City began planning for the Bailey Sanitary Landfill, and how it
looks today after more than four decades of municipal waste disposal.
Today, landfills in the Chilliwack area have overwhelmingly been located either directly
on or adjacent to First Nation reserve land. There have been large landfills on the lands of Cheam
First Nation, Shxwhá:y Village, and Skwah First Nation 11, and because they are located on First
Nation reserve land it is not known how much or what kind of waste they have accepted (FVRD,
2014). The Parr Road Green Depot shares a border with Squiala First Nation, and the Bailey
Landfill with Tzeachten First Nation, both of which are managed by the municipal government.
The Bailey Landfill covers approximately 45 hectares of land that is surrounded by, but excluded
from, the ALR (City of Chilliwack, 2016a). The land that the Bailey Landfill resides on is valued

11

The Cheam and Shxwhá:y Village landfills have been closed down, and the status of the Skwah landfill is not well
known (Woodward, 2014). The Cheam landfill stopped accepting waste in 2001 (Cheam Enterprises Inc, 2017), and
the Shxwhá:y Village landfill stopped accepting waste in 2015 (City of Chilliwack, 2016b).

43

Figure 4.4: Bailey Road and the Bailey Sanitary Landfill in 1983. City of Chilliwack. (1983).
Location of the Bailey Sanitary Landfill [Aerial Photo]. Scale not given.
at $2 million, and is expected to generate between $100,000 and $300,000 by selling the carbon
offset credits it will receive for the methane flaring facility that was opened on site in 2014
(Henderson, 2015). The city also generates income through dumping fees collected at the
landfill. Currently, it is designed to hold 2.5 million m3 of waste (FVRD, 2014) and
approximately 7000 tonnes of waste are brought in per month. Most of this waste comes from
within Chilliwack, although it also serves other surrounding communities within the Fraser
Valley Regional District.12 The facility also has a recycling transfer station on-site that accepts
recyclable materials that are not allowed to go into the landfill (City of Chilliwack, personal
communications, August 29, 2017). While it was previously expected to close by 2019, it is now

12

The Bailey Landfill accepts waste from Electoral Area D, E, and H which includes the communities of Cultus Lake,
Lindell Beach, Baker Trails, Bell Acres, Slesse Park, and Popkum (FVRD, 2017).

44

Figure 4.5: Bailey Road and the Bailey Sanitary Landfill in 2016. Source: City of Chilliwack.
(2016). Location of the Bailey Sanitary Landfill [Aerial Photo]. Scale not given.
predicted to reach capacity by approximately 2050 based on the current and future planned
diversion of recyclable and compostable materials (City of Chilliwack, personal
communications, August 25, 2017). If waste diversion improves considerably, it could remain
open until 2070 (FVRD, 2014).
Adjacent to the landfill, Tzeachten First Nation has converted a large section of their land
into the Tzeachten Sports Field, a recreation centre used for both community events and thirdparty facility rentals. This facility employs Tzeachten band members and offers volunteer
experience and training programs for Tzeachten youth. There are language classes, homework
clubs, movie nights, sports events, science classes, summer camps, and cultural celebrations that
are planned regularly and open to all band members. Tzeachten has recently invested in an
expansion of this facility, installing an artificial turf field in the summer of 2017 to host more
sports events. As Tzeachten First Nation has built up this area and expanded their facilities to the
45

south, the Bailey Landfill has simultaneously grown north (Figure 4.5). Along the southwest side
of Bailey Road is the location of 13 houses where Tzeachten band members and their families
live13. The families living in these houses have done so for generations, since the creation of this
reserve land. Before the reserve existed, their ancestors occupied this area for thousands of years.
This means that many of the residents are not only related through their family lineage, they also
share a long, rich history and culture that is specifically connected to the physical environment.
Several Tzeachten band members who participated in interviews could (and did) point out
their window to a location beyond their property and describe what the landscape looked like a
century ago because their parents and their grandparents lived here before them. Residents are
benefiting from the well-established social and cultural ties that they have with each other, that
are firmly rooted in their shared history and the place in which that history occurred. These
relationships, shared backgrounds, and the sense of community that they help create are an
important form of social and cultural capital. This kind of capital can positively influence health
(Eisenberger, 2013), well-being (Chong et al., 2017; Raymond-Flesch et al., 2017), learning
(Tripp et al., 2009; Bodovski et al., 2017), and economic growth (Algan & Cahuc, 2013; Forte et
al., 2015). This is because positive, healthy relationships cultivate trust, cooperation, and
security, allowing people to work towards common goals (Field, 2003). Security here is twofold
– social and cultural networks can create a feeling of physical safety, but also a sense of security
and control over one’s own fate and the fate of their social and cultural groups (Windsor &
McVey, 2005).
Thus, it is not just the contents of Tzeachten First Nation’s programs and facilities that
make Bailey Road so important. It is also the intangible resources that have been growing and
strengthening over many generations. This landscape, the physical land that they live on,
supports all of these resources that, while invisible to those who are not looking, are incredibly
important. They create a sense of place that connects people to their environment in deep,
meaningful ways and become essential parts of one’s personal identity (Windsor & McVey,
2005). These connections to place are particularly important when considering the colonial
history of this region, and how it has already severed important social, cultural, and political

13

Not all Tzeachten band members live here. Many families live on Steetaws Road and Chilkwayuk Road, which are
also on Tzeachten First Nation reserve land. Many families also live off reserve.

46

networks between Indigenous peoples and between traditional First Nations. A loss of
Indigenous spaces through colonial control and restrictive reserve systems represents a loss of
place and those important connections between Indigenous identities and the places in which
those identities are created and expressed.
Finally, the land on the north side of Bailey Road is used primarily for a diverse set of
agricultural activities. The farms range in size and productivity considerably – from small hobby
farms meant only for personal use, to highly productive centres of agricultural activities that
have several full-time employees. Corn, grain, grapes, berries, and ornamental trees are grown as
the primary means of income generation, although secondary businesses such as leather smiths,
produce sales, and vineyard tours are also present. Both the primary agricultural activities and
these secondary businesses are offering products and services that are connected to what can be
grown from the land, and so there is a connection between many of Bailey Road’s residents and
the physical landscape. However, this connection is not the same as the relationship between
Tzeachten band members and the environment. While Tzeachten residents share a history and
culture tied to their environment, farmers are connected to their land through livelihood
activities. Furthermore, while food crops for human consumption are grown along Bailey Road
to some degree, it is not as prevalent as the cultivation of crops not used for human consumption,
such as hay and ornamental trees. This means that they do not necessarily rely on the landscape
for anything other than the production of financial capital. Thus, their sense of place and the
connections they have to their land is different from that of Tzeachten band members.
In addition, the farmers here come from different social, economic, and cultural
backgrounds and arrived here at different times for different reasons. They do not have the same
shared history like Tzeachten residents do, and thus do not have the same social and cultural ties
to the land and to other farmers. There are many examples on Bailey Road of farmers simply
using the land for agricultural production while they live elsewhere, meaning they also do not
rely on Bailey Road for housing.14 This is especially true for those farmers who rent homes on
Bailey Road to non-farming families – the land and the structures on it are being used
exclusively for monetary gain. This connection between livelihoods and the environment is

14

None of these farmers participated in this project, and so no definite conclusions can be drawn about their
relationship to Bailey Road or their opinions about the Bailey Landfill.

47

important, but it means that the potential implications of the Bailey Landfill are different for this
group. This difference is apparent in many participant responses, which will be examined in the
following chapter. The highly variable backgrounds between farmers and Tzeachten band
members have their own implications for the City of Chilliwack and their ability to effectively
manage the Bailey Landfill, as these different community groups have different needs and value
sets.

Conclusion
Bailey Road is reflective of Chilliwack’s history and growth over the last two centuries. It
is the location of First Nations land that has been physically separated from both important
natural resources and social and cultural networks. While Tzeachten can be translated to mean
home of the fish weir, there are no water systems for fishing adjacent to Tzeachten’s reserve land.
To the north and east of this land is a relatively dense cluster of farms that make up only a small
portion of the widespread, intensive agricultural industries that make up a significant portion of
the city’s economic activity. The creation of the sprawling agricultural landscape present in
Chilliwack was a major contributor to the initial push to segregate Indigenous peoples from
much of the land in this region. Finally, to the south and east of Tzeachten’s reserve land is the
Bailey Landfill, a product of economic growth and urban expansion facilitated in part by
capitalist systems of mass production and consumption – the same growth and urban expansion
that helped keep Indigenous peoples away from their traditional lands and traditional land uses.
The resources along Bailey Road are both tangible and intangible. The physical landscape
is in itself an important resource due to its fertile soil, and the activities that occur on the land
provide important, less tangible benefits to the people living there. Agricultural outputs,
community events, cultural practices, and stable housing facilitate financial stability, relationship
building, cultural learning and knowledge sharing, and healthy lifestyles. Additionally, the two
groups living on Bailey Road, farmers and Indigenous residents, are benefiting from the land in
different ways. The presence of such diverse land uses and resources means that any negative
externalities generated by the Bailey Landfill can interact with and impact the people living here
in differing and complex ways. This multifaceted understanding of landfill impacts is often
underexplored in solid waste research; governments and the private sector typically take a more
48

quantitative approach to landfill management while ignoring qualitative measurements of an
areas health and well-being (Davy, 1996). Furthermore, the different histories and cultures
present along Bailey Road, in combination with the Bailey Landfill, create a highly
heterogeneous landscapes that must be considered by City officials when making any changes to
the Bailey Landfill’s operations.

49

Chapter 5: Geographies of Distrust and Uncertainty

This research revealed important differences in the understandings of landfill disamenities
between different community groups, and these differing understandings are tied to the various
relationships between people and their environment. The groups involved in this research are all
using the land along Bailey Road in different ways – farmers are producing food for livelihood
purposes, Tzeachten band members are recreating and expressing important social and cultural
ties and benefiting from community programs at the Tzeachten Sports Field, and the City uses
the Bailey Landfill for city-wide waste management. These activities and the various benefits
they provide influence the ways in which individuals understand their environment, which in
turn influences how they perceive the Bailey Landfill and its possible benefits and disamenities.
Not only did this research demonstrate differences between perceptions of risk and disamenities
between residents and City authorities, but also between individual residents of different social
groups. While all farmers were concerned about the City’s methods (or lack thereof) for
communication and consultation, the details and reasons for these concerns varied based on their
past experiences, their ties to Bailey Road, and their own personal histories. Alternatively, while
Indigenous community members had similar concerns about poor communication, their
comments were tied more directly to their historical connections to the land and what the Bailey
Landfill means in terms of their own cultural and social ties.
Due to the wide variety of land uses occurring along Bailey Road and the resources and
benefits they provide to residents, the Bailey Landfill can have complex, dynamic impacts on
local people. The waste facility present physical risks to health and safety, as the by-products of
waste degradation can be harmful to surrounding soil, water, and air. There are also economic
impacts since these physical risks threaten agricultural production and therefore farmer
livelihoods. Tzeachten First Nation faces challenges with their sports field since the Bailey
Landfill can hinder the band’s ability to find new clients to rent the facility. Of course, Tzeachten
band members also experience threats to the sustainability of important social and cultural ties,
as the Bailey Landfill’s growth over time has led some families to worry that their children will
not want to inherit their homes, and will be forced to live off-reserve or outside of Chilliwack
entirely. However, the City is promoting a more limited understanding of waste management that
is not necessarily reflective of these complex impacts. Problematic communication and
50

challenging relationships are significant factors contributing to their limited waste management
narrative. Few opportunities exist for local people to influence waste management practices or
contribute to the City’s narrative. The City does not have the same deep, intimate knowledge of
the landfill that local residents do because the City is simply managing a facility from afar as
opposed to living next to it and experiencing it every day. This chapter will detail and provide
analysis of the responses of Bailey Road residents, Tzeachten employees, and the City of
Chilliwack, and examine how municipal waste management is being framed by those in power,
and where misunderstandings lie.

Local Perceptions of Risk and Landfill Disamenities
This section will summarize the negative externalities experienced by those living along
Bailey Road, and discuss the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous responses.
Strong patterns in concerns and perceptions of risk exist in responses from participants,
particularly between Indigenous community members living on Bailey Road. Tzeachten band
members who participated more often had detailed responses and were much more concerned
about their physical health than non-Indigenous participants. Eight out of nine Indigenous
participants and three out of five farmer participants stated that they currently hold a negative
opinion of the landfill. Overall, Indigenous residents had a strong feeling of uncertainty and fear
for their physical health and the health of the natural environment. Conversely, farmers were
more dissatisfied with the City’s apparent apathy towards communication and consent. This was
also true for the two Tzeachten Band Administration employees. A feeling of powerlessness
dominated the interviews for most participants from both groups.
Concerns about the Bailey Landfill overlapped frequently between responses from
Indigenous residents, while farmers’ responses were more varied. There were some common
threads within farmers’ responses, but not to the same degree as Indigenous ones. These more
heterogeneous responses from farmers reflect their diverse social and cultural backgrounds,
arrival times, locations along Bailey Road, and livelihood activities. As explained in the previous
chapter, farmers who participated in interviews began farming here at different times, and
participate in differing scales of agricultural production. Some participants grow food crops for
their own consumption on a very small scale while paying others to cultivate the high-demand
51

crops that they sell for a profit (such as hay and ornamental trees). Others do all of their
agricultural work by themselves. Some farmers own large-scale agricultural operations that have
many employees and others only farm on Bailey Road while living elsewhere (these individuals
did not participate in interviews). Of the latter, several choose to rent houses on their property to
non-agricultural families. Four of the five participants indicated that they had moved to Bailey
Road to pursue agriculture less than twenty years ago, and two of the five did not have previous
experience in agriculture. Others either grew up in a farming household, or they married in to
one as an adult.
The differing experiences and backgrounds of farmer participants contribute to differing
relationships to the environment, to the City of Chilliwack, and to each other. These relationships
arguably influence their views on the Bailey Landfill. When asked if their overall opinion of the
Bailey Landfill was negative or positive, three of the five farmers indicated that they hold
negative views of the facility. However, these overall negative feelings were tied more to their
opinions of the City of Chilliwack than the actual landfill. The other two farmers were indifferent
about the landfill, but also expressed frustrations with the City for reasons mostly unrelated to
municipal waste management practices. These reasons included poor communication, feeling
like Promontory residents were valued more than Bailey Road residents, and negative
experiences with city officials. Some farmers indicated that their negative opinions come from
past experiences where the City imposed private property land use changes to facilitate
municipal infrastructure expansions.15 They felt that these infrastructure changes were meant
primarily for the convenience of Promontory residents while having exclusively negative
impacts on Bailey Road residents. They explained that these land use changes occurred without
any form of consent or meaningful consultation. While these issues are not directly related to the
Bailey Landfill, they are indicative of a larger problem where the City of Chilliwack has
relatively unchecked control over the lives and livelihoods of private citizens. Furthermore, the
prioritization of the wealthier, newer, denser Promontory community over the older agricultural
community of Bailey Road may be connected to issues of class and potential tax pools. The City
of Chilliwack may feel that it has much more to gain in taxes by investing money into

15

The details of these imposed land use changes are politically sensitive and thus, are not included to protect
participant identities.

52

infrastructure that increases the appeal of Promontory - a predominantly upper-middle class
neighbourhood that caters to young families.
Two farmers indicated that they had moved here at a time when the landfill was already
relatively large and could be seen from the road. They purchased their land knowing the landfill
would likely continue to grow; their opinion of the facility was not as negative as those from
other respondents. The farmer who has lived on Bailey Road the longest of the five participants
had a more negative opinion of the landfill than those who have lived here for less time. This
farmer indicated that they had watched it grow from a much smaller waste pile into the mountain
of garbage that it is today. The two farmers who moved to Bailey Road knowing that there was a
major waste facility close by had more control over their proximity to an undesirable land use –
if the Bailey Landfill was a problem, they could have chosen to live and farm elsewhere.
However, the farmer who had lived here much longer did not have the same level of control – he
already had an established livelihood and lifestyle that was tied to Bailey Road that would have
been difficult to pick up and move. Finally, two of the five farmers were told by their real estate
agent before they purchased their land that the landfill would be shutting down within five years.
This clearly was not true, and they were either intentionally mislead by a real estate agent
looking to make a sale, or were unintentionally given incorrect information by someone they
believed they could trust.
While one farmer had little control over his environment due to his life already being
firmly rooted along Bailey Road when the landfill began to grow in size, these final two farmers
lacked control over their environment because they were given false information about the
landfill. This could be another indication that the City of Chilliwack does a poor job
communicating with its residents, causing real estate agents to provide unreliable information to
their clients. These two respondents also had more negative views than the two farmers who had
knowingly chosen to live near the landfill. Another important aspect to consider is the various
distances between participant homes and the Bailey Landfill. While Tzeachten residents live on
the same southern side of the road as the Bailey Landfill, the majority of non-Indigenous
residents occupy the north side of the road with a paved road and approximately 0.8 kilometers
between the pavement and the northern boundary of the landfill. Furthermore, non-Indigenous
residents are dispersed along the entire stretch of road. Tzeachten band members, however, only

53

occupy a small section of Bailey Road, and thus experience a relatively similar degree of risk
and exposure to negative impacts.
An unexpected result of this research was the various positive opinions that farmers had
about the landfill. All interviewed farmers indicated that they benefited from the Bailey Landfill
in ways that go beyond having a centralized disposal site and weekly waste pickup. Some
farmers felt that the close proximity was convenient for the additional waste they generate on
their farms that cannot be picked up by municipal garbage trucks (construction materials, scrap
metal, excess recycling, etc.). One farmer believed that the dumping fees collected at the landfill
are good for taxpayers because they help to recoup the costs of waste management. He explained
that he benefits from the landfill “as a taxpayer, [because] it wouldn’t be open if they didn’t
make money on it. I mean, they’ve invested a lot of money into that landfill, taxpayer money,
and I know they’re gunna get that money back.” Interestingly, two farmers explained that the
landfill attracts wildlife that would not otherwise exist on Bailey Road,
Every spring I have a bald eagle show here. There are hundred flying from the
Fraser River or from Harrison up to the Bailey dump and to Cultus Lake. And
they’re just flying back and forth. It’s a magnificent sight. I’m sure they’re
scavenging something at the dump.
This response is in stark contrast to the long list of concerns expressed by the majority of
respondents. While unexpected, these result demonstrate that different social and cultural groups
are likely to have different values and understandings of waste, risk, and the environment. Unlike
farmer participants, Tzeachten band members did not indicate that they benefited from the
Bailey Landfill in any way beyond the basic waste disposal service that all Chilliwack residents
receive. Instead, Tzeachten band members spoke at length about the concerns they have for their
health and safety.
The Bailey Landfill is not the only human development along Bailey Road that creates risk
for residents, it is just the largest and most obvious. There are BC Hydro power lines overhead,
pesticide use from the nearby agricultural land, and the Kinder Morgan pipeline running east to
west across south Chilliwack (Figure 5.1). When asked about whether they believe the landfill is
affecting their physical health, three Tzeachten residents explained that, while they are concerned
about their health, it is not just the landfill that worries them. One woman indicated,
54

Figure 5.1: Map of utilities in Chilliwack. Source: City of Chilliwack. (2012). City Utility
Map. Retrieved from www.chilliwack.ca/main/page.cfm?id=2140
We got the power lines, we got kinder, we got farmers with all their sprays, and then
we got the landfill. […] You go out to Soowahlie16 and there’s not many people who
are sick because they’re way back there. All the ones out here are getting sick.
Similarly, a farmer stated that they are not as concerned about the Bailey Landfill primarily
because they live underneath BC Hydro power lines. Their concern is focused on threat that is
physically closer to them. Bailey Road sits in a strategic location for potentially harmful
developments. It is as far south from the Fraser River as once can get before having to traverse
over hills and mountains. The base of these hills, where land is naturally flat, is ideal for the
installation of infrastructure like the Kinder Morgan pipeline and BC Hydro power lines. If these
structures were to suffer considerable damage, the resulting environmental contamination would
likely not make it directly in to the Fraser River – at least not immediately. While this research is
focused on uncovering the negative impacts of the Bailey Landfill, it is important to remember

16

Soowahlie First Nation reserve land is located near Cultus Lake, an area that has remained relatively separate
from Chilliwack’s urban development. The area is characterized by the large lake, dense forests, and plentiful
campgrounds.

55

that residents live close to several hazards and therefore have more risk to cope with than just
those created by the landfill itself.
All of these human developments create a landscape of hazards that could threaten one’s
health if adequate safety measures are not in place. One Indigenous respondent explained that
illnesses such as heart disease, various cancers, and reproductive challenges are prevalent among
Bailey Road and Chilliwack River Road residents, whereas Tzeachten members living on
Steetaws Road or off reserve are typically healthier. Furthermore, safety measures are not
controlled by the communities that are at risk (with the exception of the farmers that control their
own pesticide use), resulting in a high level of uncertainty and a feeling of not being in control.
This uncertainty and fear of potential illness can result in ongoing stress for nearby residents
(Hallman & Wandersman, 1992). Most participants living on Bailey Road (10 of 14) expressed
worry and frustration in not knowing if they are being protected. In reference to the Bailey
Landfill, one woman stated “I don’t even know what’s in there anymore. […] It’s just scary, my
whole family is here. I don’t even know how safe it is for them.” While there is no definite
causal relationship between the physical illnesses outlined and the Bailey Landfill, the ongoing
stress of not knowing can have a negative impact on mental and physical health (DeLongis et al.,
1988; Peek et al., 2009).
Indigenous participants were particularly concerned about asbestos being accepted at the
landfill. In 2016 the City of Chilliwack made the decision to accept asbestos at the Bailey landfill
to reduce illegal dumping of materials containing asbestos. Before this time, there was no local
option for asbestos disposal. While illegal dumping of these materials has been reduced
considerably since this change17, residents living on Bailey Road were not adequately notified.
Most respondents were aware that the Bailey Landfill was going to accept asbestos, only three
were aware that this change has already happened. Moreover, many were not aware of any
additional safety measures implemented at the landfill to mitigate the risks associated with
asbestos. While the Bailey Landfill does follow the Ministry of Environment’s asbestos disposal
requirements (this includes storage in asbestos-proof bags and immediate burial in a dedicated
area of the landfill), this is not communicated well enough with those living nearby. No level of

17

This information comes from the response given by the City of Chilliwack, although no specific details (number
of occurrences, volume of asbestos materials illegally dumped before or after the change, etc.) were provided.

56

risk mitigation can reduce stress and fear of one’s environment if no one is aware of that
mitigation.
Tzeachten members also expressed concern about the potential for landfill fires. These
concerns stem from fires that have occurred in the past at other landfills in the Fraser Valley, and
a more general understanding that all landfills are, on some level, a fire hazard. The United
States, for example, experiences 8,400 landfill fires every year, and even more go undetected and
unreported (TriData Corporation, 2002). These fires can emit dangerous pollutants into the air
and soil (Chrysikou et al., 2008; Vassiliadou et al., 2009; Weichenthat et al., 2015), and the fire
itself can damage property and potentially cause harm to landfill employees or nearby residents.
Most notably, Tzeachten members referenced the 2013 fire at the Shxwhá:y Village18 landfill.
The fire engulfed a three-storey-high mountain of waste that covered half a hectare of land, and
extinguishing it was slowed due to a lack of on-site fire hydrants (Ma, 2013). This landfill has
since closed down, and Shxwhá:y Village has spent $2.2 million remediating the site (Shxwhá:y
Village, n.d.). Interestingly, since the Shxwhá:y Village landfill shut down in 2015 the Bailey
Landfill has experienced a significant increase in how much waste it receives19 (City of
Chilliwack, 2016b; figure 5.2), increasing the level of risk and exacerbating the negative
externalities already experienced by Bailey Road residents. On September 27, 2017 the Bailey
Landfill experienced its own fire, and the entire facility including the adjacent recycling centre
was closed down for 24 hours (Chilliwack Progress, 2017; Lehn, 2017). No one was injured, and
the flames were extinguished quickly, but the timing of the fire certainly reiterated the concerns
expressed by respondents only two months prior.
Not only is there concern for their own bodily health, there is also a general consensus that
the land along Bailey Road is contaminated. Many Indigenous respondents are certain that the
protections in place at the landfill are not sufficient, and that leachate has been gradually moving
through the land since the site first began holding waste in the mid-20th century. This fear of the
natural landscape can deter residents from partaking in healthy, productive activities such as

18

Shxwhá:y Village is a First Nation situated just outside of Chilliwack, within Stó:lō and Ts’elxwéyeqw traditional
territory.
19
This increase has also been partly attributed to the change in exchange rate between Canada and the US. Private
waste haulers have, in the past, opted to bring waste to landfills in Washington. With the value of the Canadian
dollar declining it has become much cheaper to bring waste to Canadian landfills (City of Chilliwack, 2016b).

57

Figure 5.2: Monthly waste quantities received at the Bailey Landfill. Source:
City of Chilliwack. (2016b). First Quarter Report, 2016: Engineering. City of
Chilliwack Engineering Department.

gardening - one woman explained that she was afraid to have a vegetable garden in her back yard
because she did not trust that the soil was safe. Farmers were not as concerned for their own
health or the health of the environment. This could be because of the ongoing productivity of
their agricultural land. None of the five farmer participants felt that the Bailey Landfill affected
their agricultural outputs. Their crops are a tangible indicator of the health of the physical
landscape, and they could be extrapolating this to mean that their own health is also not affected
by the landfill. It is also likely that the distance from the landfill effects their perception of risk.
Two respondents explained that the BC Hydro power lines worried them more than the Bailey
Landfill in terms of potential threats to their health, as they live directly below the power lines
and do not see the garbage that is deposited at the landfill.
All respondents indicated that they see a considerable amount of garbage along Bailey
Road year-round. This waste falls out of vehicles on their way to the landfill or is illegally
dumping along Bailey Road to avoid paying a fee at the landfill. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show
pictures taken of garbage along Bailey Road on two different days. Participants reported that this
is a common, year-round condition for their road. One farmer specified that Bailey Road receives
the most garbage during the spring, when Chilliwack residents are doing more yard work,
58

Figure 5.3: Garbage along Bailey Road. Photo taken on September 27, 2017 by the PR.
renovating their homes, and participating in “spring cleaning.” Respondents stated that because
Bailey Road is known most commonly for the landfill, the entire road is associated with waste
disposal. One Tzeachten employee explained,
It’ll be dropped off by people who don’t want to pay to use the landfill, we are the
next best location. […] That comes our way more because the dump is there, that
location is seen as a place where garbage can be disposed of.
When asked if the City ever helps with cleanup, respondents said that either they never see City
employees helping, or that they do help but not frequently enough. One Tzeachten band member
described an incident in the early 1990s when the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
decided to strike,
By the time the strike was over people would come and dump their garbage, because
they had no place to take it, so they dumped it on both sides of the road from the gate
clear out to the road. It was piled over our heads it was so high. […] And that’s
when we first started getting mice, and over the last 8 or 10 years we’ve been getting
rats.

59

Figure 5.4: Garbage on a Bailey Road resident’s private property. Photo taken on December
9, 2017 by an anonymous Bailey Road resident and used with permission of the photographer.
This is an extreme case where an exceptional amount of garbage was dumped outside of the
landfill in a relatively short time frame, but there remains a constant stream of escaped garbage
along Bailey Road year-round. The CUPE strike also demonstrates how the location of the
landfill means the residents living nearby are disproportionately burdened by events that may
halt garbage pickup/disposal. In addition to waste falling from vehicles and individuals trying to
avoid dumping fees, people scavenging for valuables at the landfill is another reason for the
garbage along Bailey Road. Both Indigenous and farmer respondents explained that people are
frequently going into the landfill to search through the garbage, looking for valuable items to
recycle or sell. In many cases, they will fill up bags and take them either to the Tzeachten Sports
60

Field parking lots or to the mailboxes at the end of the street to sort through them, taking what
they want and leaving the rest behind. One Tzeachten employee mentioned that this was likely a
side effect of the growing homeless population in Chilliwack. While they recognized that it is a
complicated issue, they said that the City could be doing more to secure the landfill. They
emphasized that blame lies with the City, not necessarily the poor, disenfranchised citizens of
Chilliwack.
Stray garbage, rats and mice, and the negative connotations associated with Bailey Road
can create a stressful home and work environment that nearby residents must cope with on a
daily basis, unable to escape or control these issues. Furthermore, these problems can have
economic implications for residents and the Tzeachten Band Administration. The woman who
spoke of the CUPE strike indicated that she has been spending $75 a month to take care of their
rat problem for at least the last three years. Seagulls are also a common nuisance associated with
landfills. The presence of densely packed waste at these facilities means that a seagull can meet
their daily nutritional needs in under 15 minutes (Department of Environmental Protection,
1998), making the Bailey Landfill a prime location for a pack of seagulls to feed. There is
virtually no reason for a seagull to go anywhere else for food, which means that the Bailey
Landfill and Bailey Road is occupied by swarms of seagulls every day (Figure 5.5 & 5.6). This is
problematic for a number of reasons, of which the most concerning is the threat to public health.
Seagulls are vectors for many diseases and harmful pollutants that are often present in their
excrement (Hird, 2015). The seagulls also drop various inedible materials, such as animal bones,
on the Tzeachten sports field. Tzeachten employees mentioned that this can impede sports games
and can be a safety hazard for employees and renters during events.
Stray garbage can create undesirable environments and several respondents, both farmers
and Tzeachten band members, indicated that they were frustrated by the dirty appearance of the
road they live on. One Tzeachten member explained, “[i]t’s not a very pretty road, […] Bailey
Road is quite often littered with trash simply because it’s en-route to the landfill”. Garbage
frequently falls from vehicles on their way to the landfill, and the high speed limit (60 km/h,
which many motorists exceed) only makes this more likely. Several farmers explained that some

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Figure 5.5: A small section of the Bailey Landfill is covered in seagulls scavenging for food
Source: Feinberg, J. (2015, December 3). Chilliwack set to sell its greenhouse gas offsets. The
Chilliwack Progress. www.theprogress.com/news/chilliwack-set-to-sell-its-greenhouse-gasoffsets/ (Accessed November 2, 2017)

Figure 5.6: Seagulls at the bailey Landfill on December 16, 2017. Photo taken by the PR.

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waste, such as scrap metal, can damage machinery (lawnmowers in particular) when it falls off
of vehicles and gets lost in their yards. For Tzeachten First Nation, these issues mean that finding
new clients to rent the sports field can be challenging. One Tzeachten Band Administration
employee explained that potential renters are likely to assume the sports field is of lower quality
compared to other fields in Chilliwack because it is on First Nation reserve land and owned by a
First Nation. Indigenous economic developments already face an uphill battle due to the racist
stereotyping of Indigenous peoples, and the close proximity to the landfill is just another layer to
this. They explained that “[the sports field] has always been seen as sort of the second-class field
in Chilliwack because of the dump and because it’s First Nations too. You think it’s by the
dump, it’s owned by First Nations, you automatically associate it with lower quality”. Another
Tzeachten Band Administration employee similarly explained, “we try to court rentals and if
they don’t know anything about the facility and you tell them it’s beside the Bailey Landfill it’s
kind of a conversation stopper right there.”
A common complaint from farmers was the lack of flexibility in their garbage pickup fees.
Chilliwack residents are given one 120L garbage bin to be picked up either once a week or once
every two weeks20, and this standard collection service is paid for by the City. Additional bins
cost households $18-$19.80 depending on the size. This system is meant to encourage residents
to recycle, compost, and reduce the amount of waste travelling to the Bailey Landfill, however it
does present a challenge for those living on Bailey Road. Farmers explained that they are largely
responsible for cleaning up any garbage along Bailey Road, and for cleaning up garbage that
falls onto their property. While some of this waste is likely to be recyclable, they stated that most
of it is destined for the landfill and as a result must go in their own garbage bins. As one farmer
explained, “why should I have to go out there and put it in my garbage which I have to pay to
have removed?” Another farmer argued that they should be exempt from any fees and taxes that
pay for weekly curbside pickup because they live so close to the landfill – they do not require
this service because they typically bring their garbage to the landfill themselves instead of

20

Chilliwack has recently switched to a new garbage collection system and has been gradually switching residents
over to the new system since the spring of 2017. With the old system, garbage collection occurred once every
week. With the new system, garbage collection only occurs once every two weeks. At the time of writing this
report, there were still residents on the old system. In addition, some residents have private garbage pickup that is
not paid for via tax dollars.

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waiting for weekly pickup, as pickup days and times are decided by the City, strict and nonnegotiable, and thus may be inconvenient or unrealistic for some households.
Finally, the negative externalities described in this section can affect local peoples’ longterm plans for their homes and their families. Two farmers expressed concern that the landfill
would affect their ability to sell their home when they are ready to retire to a community that is
smaller and quieter than Chilliwack. For Indigenous residents, all of those interviewed indicated
that their parents and grandparents have lived on Bailey Road since the late 1800’s when
members of Skowkale and Yakweakwioose First Nations first began inhabiting this section of
reserve land. Many used the word “forever” to describe how long their family had lived on this
land. Of the nine Indigenous residents interviewed, seven indicated that their homes would be
given to their children or grandchildren, or an additional home would be built for their
children/grandchildren on their property. Of those seven, all of them worried that their children
might not want to inherit the homes and live on Bailey Road because of the hazards that
surround them. If future generations choose to live off-reserve it could result in a new phase of
the fracturing of social, economic, and political ties between and within First Nations that began
in the 19th century. Indigenous peoples have already suffered immeasurable losses to their lands
and heritage at the hands of the Canadian government. The growth of the Bailey Landfill may
continue to impact the future sustainability of Indigenous culture for Tzeachten band members.
A more dispersed population could erode familial and community ties between Tzeachten band
members, separating individuals both physically and socially. Furthermore, this could have
economic implications for future generations if the cost of housing in the Fraser Valley and
Lower Mainland continues to rise. The next generation of Tzeachten band members may have to
choose between living beside a landfill, struggling to afford housing off-reserve, or living further
east, away from their band, where housing is more affordable.
The City of Chilliwack has immense control over the lives of Chilliwack residents. This is
not inherently bad – government regulations can keep populations safe by restricting undesirable
behaviours. However, it becomes problematic when they control a community’s environment in
ways that negatively impact their health, well-being, livelihoods, and culture for the sake of a
waste facility that many never consented to live beside. When combined with a history of
colonial control and cultural oppression and segregation, this level of power can feel oppressive

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and incredibly stressful and insensitive for Bailey Road residents, particularly for Indigenous
respondents. Despite the varied concerns of Tzeachten band members and Bailey Road farmers,
important common threads demonstrate the biggest challenges that the City will face if they wish
to improve their relationship with their residents. The high degree of power that the City has is
made immeasurably worse by the poor communication from city officials, and this has resulted
in tensions between residents and their municipal government. In particular, this poor
communication, which will be discussed in the following section, has resulted in the many
concerns of Bailey Road residents that are being ignored in favour of a simpler narrative.

Waste Narratives and the Municipal Agenda
The response from the City of Chilliwack detailed the safety precautions that, in their eyes,
reduce the amount of risk to an acceptable level. While it is integral that any landfill be highly
engineered and safely separate waste from human and environmental contact, there are other
issues that the City needs to consider in their landfill management plans. This narrative, which
frames the landfill as safe and highly regulated is too simplistic, and ignores the many concerns
expressed by community members living on Bailey Road. The City has routinely failed to
develop a means of communicating with its residents that provides them with a meaningful level
of power. If residents were able to contribute to conversations about the landfill and make
decisions, it would provide them with more control over the quality and conditions of the
environment in which they live and work. Their problematic methods of communication have
resulted in extremely limited understandings of risk, negative impacts of waste management, and
expert knowledge that do not necessarily align with local conceptualizations. This section will
review the City’s response and compare them to the understandings of local people.
Despite the limitations in the City’s response to this research, a significant amount of
important information can be drawn from the interview. Based on their answers, it is clear that
the City’s waste management strategies focus primarily on mitigating physical risks to nearby
people and the environment. Their response also detailed the methods of communication used
between the municipal government and Bailey Road residents, which are problematic and
contribute to the City’s limited understanding of landfill disamenities. It includes little discussion
of specific issues such as stray garbage, rat infestations, or human scavengers, as these concerns
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were brought to the PR’s attention after the City received their list of interview questions. While
the limited communication between the PR and the City is unfortunate, it is also indicative of the
City’s overall willingness to participate in open discussions with citizens. The City does not have
a reputation for being open to discussions unless they maintain control over the conditions in
which those discussions take place. In this case, an interview was limited to written responses
sent via e-mail. In other cases, where the City has attempted to communicate with Tzeachten
First Nation about the Bailey Landfill, discussion has been limited to one-time band meetings, or
conversations with Tzeachten staff. Often, when the City wants to relay information and forgo
discussion entirely, they utilize website or newspaper postings that provide no meaningful way
for residents to respond.
The fear of potential health and safety implications was a topic that came up in the
majority of interviews with Bailey Road residents, especially with Indigenous participants. Not
feeling confident that they are adequately protected and not knowing what protections are in
place has many worried for their own health and the health of their children. In the City’s
response to these concerns, they outlined the ways in which risks to nearby people and the
environment are mitigated. They explained,
Risks are mitigated through comprehensive design, construction, operation and
monitoring programs. […] Extensive infrastructure has been installed at the landfill
over the past 30 years to capture water that comes into contact with waste
(“leachate”), and the leachate is piped to the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant. All
leachate collection systems are designed and installed under the supervision of
qualified professional engineers.
Specifically, in reference to the most recent change at the Bailey Landfill to accept
asbestos-containing waste, the City explained,
All asbestos-containing materials accepted at the Bailey Landfill are handled in
accordance with a comprehensive Asbestos Waste Management Plan and health and
safety procedures that have been developed in accordance with WorkSafe BC and
Ministry of Environment requirements. To avoid exposure to workers or the general
public, all asbestos waste must be brought to the landfill in thick plastic bags
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manufactured specifically for asbestos waste. The asbestos waste must be double
bagged and gooseneck-tied to prevent spillage or exposure. The bags are buried by
the landfill contractor following a controlled procedure, placed in a dedicated, lined
area of the landfill and immediately covered with at least 0.5 metres of soil.
Despite the infrastructure and regulations that exist at the landfill to keep people safe from
the harmful by-products of waste degradation, residents are not confident that they are being
protected. As stated previously, when these safety precautions are not communicated to a
population living close to a hazardous facility it does nothing to reduce the level of fear and
stress for that population. If the precautions outlined in the City’s statement are adequately
keeping Bailey Road safe, then the health and safety concerns expressed by residents are more an
issue of poor communication than objective health threats. Based on the concerns expressed by
residents and the response from the City, communication and relationship building appear to one
of the most significant reasons for local peoples’ poor opinion of the landfill.
As stated by the City, decisions regarding the operation of the Bailey Landfill are made
primarily by the City of Chilliwack, although many require approval from the provincial
government to ensure that certain provincial requirements are met. The BC Ministry of
Environment and the provincial and federal government control specific operational standards
and legislation meant to prevent pollution (Soltani et al., 2017), but the municipal government
controls how landfill practices are communicated with the public and the level of public
consultation that might occur when changes are made21. For example, the Ministry of
Environment had to approve the new changes to the landfill that allowed for the burial of
asbestos as well as the development of a food waste transferring station, but the means by which
these developments were communicated to Chilliwack residents was at the discretion of city
officials. The City explained that consultation for changes in landfill practices depends on the
changes in question. They stated,

21

The exception to this is if the City proposed an expansion to the landfill that would result in agriculture land
being taken out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. In this case, adjacent farmers would have to be notified and given
the opportunity to provide feedback. This was the case with the most recent expansion to the landfill that began in
2007.

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The public in general was advised about the City’s plans with respect to asbestos
disposal and the compostable waste transfer station. […] The asbestos disposal will
not have any offsite impacts (odour, leachate, litter), so further consultation was not
considered necessary. The information provided to the public about asbestos
disposal included the measures being taken to protect health and safety.
This statement demonstrates the control that the City has over Bailey Road and the health
of its residents. There is no clear definition of offsite impacts, neither in their response nor in any
municipal documents available online. In the City’s Solid Waste Management Bylaw, where
definitions of all waste-related terms are provided, there is no explanation of what constitutes an
offsite impact (City of Chilliwack, 2017a). Thus, their example of “odour, leachate, litter” as
offsite impacts is the only definition available, and demonstrates their limited understandings of
how landfills can impact nearby residents. Those in power are defining what a risk is, and what
is considered to be an offsite impact of the Bailey Landfill, and their definitions of risk and
impact influence decision making. Residents living beside the landfill, who experience the
impacts of the Bailey Landfill every day, are not in any position to define what risk means to
them, despite these individuals being more experienced for that task. Community members have
more intimate connections to the landfill because they live with its impacts every day. The City
is operating a landfill based on extremely limited understandings of its offsite impacts, which are
defined by those in positions of power who do not experience these impacts. Without personal
experience or thorough consultation, those in decision-making positions are essentially guessing
what these impacts are, with no way of knowing if they are correct. These limited understandings
are then used to determine the means and level of communication between the City and Bailey
Road residents. In this case, information about asbestos disposal was delivered to the public via
the City of Chilliwack website and through notices in local newspapers. Neither of these means
of communication are meant specifically for those living on Bailey Road, but instead they are
meant for the general Chilliwack population.
While the internet can be a valuable tool for communicating information, it is only
effective if people know to look for that information. It is unlikely that residents will seek out
information about changes to their surroundings if they do not know that such changes are taking
place. Furthermore, if people do not know how to navigate a website or the internet in general,
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then this means of communication will not amount to adequate information sharing. This could
be problematic for Bailey Road as there are many residents ages 50 and above. As for notices in
local newspapers, several participants indicated that Bailey Road does not receive mail delivery
and therefore residents do not receive the newspaper. Bailey Road residents, like much of the
Chilliwack population, have a community mailbox at the end of the street where they receive
their mail. It appears that the City has not recognized this transition in mail delivery, and has not
adjusted their means of communication to reflect this change. Because few households receive
door-to-door newspaper delivery, and newspapers are no longer the primary means by which
individuals stay informed, this base-line means of communication is not adequate for residents
living on Bailey Road. The City relies on a means of sharing information that does not work for
the people who are going to be impacted the most by these changes. Because the City assesses
whether or not a particular change in operations is going to create additional impacts for
residents, they control whether or not a particular population receives enough information to
ensure that they feel safe. No part of this process asks for local input on definitions of risk,
offsite impacts, or best communication practices. For many Bailey Road residents, poor
communication has left them feeling concern, stress, and as though their well-being is not
important to the municipal government.
This inadequate means of communication also further removes decision making and power
from Bailey Road. Participants explained that the City sometimes hosts public hearings where
Chilliwack residents are given the opportunity to vote on a variety of issues presented by City
authorities, including but not limited to proposed changes to the Bailey Landfill. These meetings
are open to the public, but the same communication issues limit the amount of fair and
meaningful power sharing that occurs. Notices about these hearings indicating their time and
location are shared primarily through local newspapers, but they do not reach the residents living
on Bailey Road. As a result, they are not able to vote on issues that involve their homes, their
livelihoods, and their health. Power is removed from Bailey Road and distributed (unevenly)
across the rest of Chilliwack – or at least the areas that have newspaper delivery. One farmer,
expressing his frustrations with recent public hearings, explained,
We’re the directly affected people, all of us, all the neighbours here, we should have
been notified. […] Who agreed to it? We certainly didn’t. Who asked us? They had
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some public meetings and 20 people filled in a questionnaire. […] Just random
people who showed up to the meeting!
This statement is in reference to recent public hearings that resulted in changes to the Bailey
Landfill and to Bailey Road more generally, including the traffic circle installed at the east end
of the road. This was a common complaint among participants, and every farmer spoke to this
issue, indicating that it was one of their primary concerns about the landfill and the City of
Chilliwack. Some Chilliwack residents are given the opportunity to participate in decision
making about Bailey Road, while Bailey Road residents are left out of that conversation.
Another farmer spoke to this problem, but presumed that even if he did receive an
invitation to these hearings and had the opportunity to vote, it likely would not matter because
Bailey Road occupies such a small portion of Chilliwack, explaining that “it wouldn’t really
result in any differences, because most of the Chilliwack public would still probably vote in
favour of a landfill expansion because they don’t have to worry about it, they don’t live near it.”
Residents living here represent such a small portion of the larger Chilliwack population22 that
this participant (although he was not the only one) felt that their relatively small voice matters
less than the overall agenda of the city, and the needs of the larger population. Chilliwack
residents benefit immensely from having a landfill, especially considering how convenient its
location is for them – close enough to make garbage drop-off quick and inexpensive, but far
enough away from the bulk of the population to make its impacts felt only by a handful of
people. The landfill reduces the amount of illegal dumping that occurs, which keeps the
environment free from waste contamination and ensures that (most) residents are living in clean,
healthy spaces. These benefits are also important to Chilliwack’s economic growth, as a clean
environment, healthy populations, and robust waste management infrastructure is essential for
generating private investment. Furthermore, the municipal government generates additional
benefits through the dumping fees that they collect, which, as the City indicated in their
response, are reinvested into various city-wide environmental efforts.23

22

The average household in Chilliwack contains 2-3 occupants (Statistics Canada, 2016a). This means that there are
fewer than 100 Bailey Road residents, which accounts for less than 0.01% of the total population of Chilliwack.
23
It is unclear if a portion of this money goes back into the Bailey Road community to help manage the negative
impacts. When asked, participants explained that they are responsible for coping with the landfills externalities,
and receive little or no help from the City.

70

If Chilliwack residents are benefiting in many ways from the landfill, and are not aware of
its negative impacts due to a lack of exposure, why would they vote no on changes to the Bailey
Landfill that could further increase those benefits? If asked whether or not they want the Bailey
Landfill to accept asbestos in order to reduce illegal dumping of asbestos-containing materials,
or whether or not the landfill should be expanded in order to accept more waste to support the
growing population, why would the average Chilliwack resident not want that? Furthermore,
even if the Chilliwack population were made aware of the negative impacts placed on nearby
communities, how can the City expect the general public to fully understand the gravity of those
changes and their possible impacts? The feeling of Bailey Road residents is that ultimately,
regardless of whether or not they are allowed to vote at these public meetings, their needs are
miniscule relative to the needs of the larger population. If the City frames changes in landfill
operations as being a necessity that will produce more benefits, then city residents who do not
have to live with the negative impacts will likely vote it through to receive those benefits.
These public hearings raise a multitude of questions that extend beyond the boundaries of
this project, but would make for interesting research in the future. Can the general public truly
understand the negative impacts of a sacrifice zone on a nearby population when those impacts
are not tangible, measureable, or easily explained? And will the public prioritize the needs of a
small marginalized community suffering the negative impacts of a sacrifice zone that is directly
benefiting the rest of the population? If Chilliwack residents and the municipal government are
reaping the rewards of this waste site while only Bailey Road residents live with the negative
impacts, why would the general public be opposed to its operations and possible expansions?
This is not to suggest that the general public should not be asked these questions, but to
demonstrate that the absence of particular voices from these conversations and an over-reliance
on extremely limited consultation methods removes power from the people who need it most.
Indigenous respondents shared this concern, that the City’s consultation methods are
ultimately problematic regardless of their intent. However, the concerns of Tzeachten band
members are more complex and tied to the colonial histories and oppression that they have
lived through. In the following quotation, the City explains how they consult with
Tzeachten First Nation when they feel it is necessary,

71

Consultation for the new Operational Certificate […] included notifying Tzeachten
First Nation and providing them with an opportunity to review the draft Operational
Certificate and provide comment. City staff also meet with Tzeachten staff on a
regular basis to discuss topics of mutual interest, including activities at the landfill.
When questions arose about the City’s plans for asbestos disposal and the
compostable waste transfer station, Tzeachten requested that the City present
information on those topics at a Tzeachten Band Membership meeting. The
information was presented and members of the community were given the
opportunity to ask questions about any concerns they had.
This statement raises more issue relating to the City’s communication practices that have worked
to reinforce the divide between Tzeachten First Nation and the larger City of Chilliwack. While
Tzeachten First Nation has a Chief, a band council, regular band meetings, and dedicated reserve
land, this does not mean that individual band members are somehow only Tzeachten band
members, and not residents of Chilliwack. The City is using band meetings to share information
about the landfill and incorrectly assuming that this dissolves their obligation to reach out to
individual residents that may be impacted by the landfill’s operations. This system of going
through Chief and Council and presenting information at a single band meeting ignores the fact
that many families within Tzeachten do not attend band meetings and may not believe that the
Tzeachten band administration represents them politically, and therefore decisions cannot be
made for them at these meetings. By assuming that band meetings are the only necessary step in
consulting with Bailey Road residents, the City is perpetuating this incorrect idea that somehow
Tzeachten band members are not Chilliwack residents. One Tzeachten employee explained the
issue in more detail,
Tzeachten still resides in the City of Chilliwack, so the City should be making sure
that the community is aware of what’s going on as well. And that is partially
Tzeachten’s fault, we do consider ourselves a separate entity, and in a way we are,
but at the same time we still exist within the city of Chilliwack. There needs to be that
relationship with the City and knowing how things are going to affect the people. I
don’t feel like they did that.

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There is a feeling amongst Tzeachten members that Indigenous peoples are clearly
different and separate from the non-Indigenous population. This feeling is perpetuated by, among
many other complex factors, the City’s poor consultation methods. By failing to contact
individual residents directly about landfill operations and potential changes, the City is
reinforcing the idea that they do not care about Indigenous peoples because they are different
from non-Indigenous peoples. This feeling is reflected in several statements from Indigenous
participants. One man indicated that “it sucks to say, but it’s like ‘those are Indians, those are
Indian problems, doesn’t matter to us’”, referring to the way he believes the City of Chilliwack
feels about the concerns that Tzeachten band members have with the landfill. Another man
expressed a similar sentiment, but specifically related it to the fact that Indigenous peoples living
on reserve do not pay property tax, and indicated,
We don’t have a voice here. They do [on Promontory] because they pay land taxes. If
[City officials] are getting all this negative feedback from all of the new residents up
there, who have to be fairly well off financially to be able to buy a home up there,
then they’re gunna listen to what they have to say. But here on our property? No,
they’re not gunna listen to us.
Another Indigenous woman shared the same belief, stating “if I did have a concern, the district
probably wouldn’t listen to us. But they might listen to the people up on Promontory because
there are far more taxes accruing up there”.
Bringing information to band meetings, in the way that the City does, is also problematic
because of the lack of meaningful discussion between city officials and band members. These
meetings are being used as a means of top-down knowledge dissemination, they are not an
opportunity to share power and decision making or to allow Tzeachten band members to express
their own conceptualizations of risk and disamenities. To restate a portion of the previous
quotation from the City, they explained that “[t]he information [about accepting asbestos at the
Bailey Landfill] was presented and members of the community were given the opportunity to ask
questions about any concerns they had.” The City is allowing band members to ask questions,
but this does not mean that band members are being given a safe space to tell the City what their
problems are with the landfill. This is not an opportunity to discuss how the landfill can be
operated in a way that eliminates the negative externalities placed on band members, it is an
73

opportunity for the City to explain why the landfill is being well-managed. This is not a
meaningful form of consultation. In fact, if we understand consultation as a process of seeking
advice or expert knowledge, then what the City is doing is not consultation at all. The experts in
this case, those who living beside the landfill, are not being asked for their local knowledge or
advice, they are being told how to feel about something.
Interestingly, information on how the City of Chilliwack specifically defines consultation
or their methods could not be located through their website or online documents. However, the
following quote was found on their webpage outlining the First Nations Policing Section24,
A key factor in helping establish stronger relationships within First Nations
communities is the individual commitment of each First Nations Policing member.
Members are encouraged to immerse themselves in the rich culture of the First
Nations communities in order to gain a better understanding of the history and
values of the people they serve. This commitment has been instrumental in building
strong working relationships within the communities (City of Chilliwack, 2017b)
This specific page on their website is not related to the Bailey Landfill or even First Nations
consultation explicitly. However, it is interesting that in this instance the City is publicly
advocating the importance of building meaningful relationships between and First Nations
communities and non-Indigenous organizations. They are stating that non-Indigenous
organizations and authorities should make an effort to increase their own cultural knowledge and
immerse themselves in First Nations cultures in order to better serve them. The City is essentially
making the same argument that a large part of this research is making: in order for the City of
Chilliwack to better serve its Indigenous citizens, they need to have a better understanding of
their cultures and histories that create unique needs and values. The difference in the City’s
statement on this webpage and the conclusions of this research is that the City is giving this
recommendation to others, while not following it themselves.
Instead, the City continues to just barely scratch the surface of Indigenous consultation and
cultural learning. They are using band meetings to reinforce their own understanding of the
24

The First Nations Policing Section is a partnership between Fraser Valley First Nations, local police, and services
such as DARE, Blockwatch, Citizens on Patrol, and the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (City of
Chilliwack, 2017b).

74

landfill – that it is safe, that the City is doing all that they should be doing, and that there is no
reason to be concerned. Meanwhile, those living next to the landfill and experiencing its
everyday impacts have very different understandings, which are often tied to cultural values and
colonial histories, which are being ignored. In speaking about the problematic communication
that happens between Tzeachten and the City, one Indigenous woman explained that,
For many First Nations people, consultation is face-to-face meetings and I don’t
think the district would ever take the time to do that. Or it would be lip service, doing
it just to say ‘we’ve consulted’, but still probably not really listen.
This issue is not experienced exclusively by Tzeachten band members since farmers were
similarly frustrated by the City’s lack of communication. Most participants from both groups felt
that their concerns about the landfill or other municipal services would not be valued if brought
to the City, and none felt confident in their understanding of the day-to-day activities occurring
at the landfill. This lack of knowledge by farmers is particularly problematic, because of how
important the health of the land is for agricultural livelihoods. However, poor communication
from the City has more complex implications for Tzeachten band members. Farmers were
frustrated because they feel like they are not in control of their private property, whereas
Indigenous respondents were frustrated because they feel like they are not in control of their
private property, their health, and the survival of important social, cultural, and familial
connections. Additionally, poor communication between the City and Tzeachten band members
reflects a history of colonial practices and oppression that, for so many Indigenous peoples, is a
wound that has not been allowed to heal. As one Indigenous respondent succinctly explained,
“[t]he city to us just represents another government that has never upheld its promise to
aboriginal people and continues to perpetuate that.”
This begs the question – if local people are not being included in landfill planning and
safety regulations, then who is? In answering many of the questions posed, the City made
reference to an array of regulatory bodies, provincial and federal partnerships, and skilled
professionals that ensure safe landfill operations. For example,
Risks are mitigated through comprehensive design, construction, operation and
monitoring programs.

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All asbestos-containing materials accepted at the Bailey Landfill are handled
in accordance with a comprehensive Asbestos Waste Management Plan and
health and safety procedures that have been developed in accordance with
WorkSafe BC and Ministry of Environment requirements
The landfill is operated in accordance with provincial regulations and
following best practices to avoid threats to nearby residents, the environment
or farm land
Qualified professional engineers also review the landfill operations and water
quality monitoring data on an annual basis, which is reported to the BC
Ministry of Environment.
It is clear that the City does not expect to find expert knowledge on Bailey Road, and
instead turns to professional entities to determine best practices for the Bailey Landfill.
Practical, local knowledge is being ignored while outside voices, from individuals who will
never have to bear the burden of living next to this landfill, are given the power to
determine how the landfill operates, and what is included in their assessment of risk. Local
people are not given power to control their own landscapes, and as a result they are not
given control over much of their social, cultural, and financial capital. As a result of this
exclusive and problematic understanding of expert knowledge, the City focuses entirely on
the technical aspects of the Bailey Landfill.
As indicated above, the City makes several references to the health and safety
regulations and the high level of engineering that has gone into the Bailey Landfill. This,
on its own, is objectively good – without careful planning and construction a landfill can
quickly become a public health concern and irreparably damage the land surrounding it.
However, because the City is not including local people in conversations about the landfill,
they are missing a large, important piece of the puzzle. There has been no consideration for
the many intangible, more qualitative ways that a landfill can impact a local population.
The municipal waste narrative that is framing the landfill as safe and heavily regulated, and
the ineffective methods of consultation with local people, is only increasing the divide
between the municipal government and the people it is meant to govern. By creating

76

definitions of landfill impacts and risk that are too simple and one-dimensional, the City is
undermining the local residents that experience the landfill’s negative impacts every day.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion
Municipal services are far from politically inert. They are created by those in positions of
political power, and exist within a broader political-historical context. Services meant to help
citizens are created and managed by a small number of people for the good of the larger
population. This is true even for a service as mundane as municipal waste management. It is the
responsibility of a small group of city authorities to implement waste management systems that
best service the people. However, this becomes problematic when those in power are not
implementing these services in a way that reflects the needs and values of vulnerable
populations. In Chilliwack, the Bailey Landfill is being operated in a way that ignores many of
the complex disamenities experienced by nearby farmers and Indigenous residents. When Bailey
Road residents were given a platform to express their concerns, it became clear that the
municipal waste narrative being promoted by the City is extremely limited, and informed by
actors who are largely unaffected by the facility. The Bailey Landfill is creating negative social,
cultural, and economic impacts that are experienced exclusively by Bailey Road residents, who
are simultaneously being excluded from municipal waste discourse.
Bailey Road residents experience a high burden of risk, while the rest of the population
benefits from a clean, healthy environment. Litter lines the sides of Bailey Road and is scattered
across private property year-round, which residents are responsible for cleaning. Residents face
ongoing battles with rats and mice invading their homes and seagulls leaving meal scraps in their
yards. This disproportionate burden of risk is further intensified in the event of a landfill fire,
closure, or employee strike. Furthermore, there are BC Hydro power lines above many of these
properties, and the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline below, meaning residents must cope with the
ongoing stress of living with multiple threats. There are also threats to the sustainability of
important social and cultural connections that exist within the Tzeachten community. As the
landfill continues to grow, residents fear that their children will choose not to live on reserve,
opting to move further away from their family to get away from the landfill. The band
administration also struggles with the landfill, and employees expressed that it can be
challenging for potential clients to mentally separate the waste facility from the sport field
facility. First Nations economic developments already face challenges related to racist

78

stereotyping by the non-Indigenous population, and the sports field’s precarious location beside
the landfill is in addition to this.
Indigenous and farmer respondents reported different levels of concern about the Bailey
Landfill. Both geographic location and cultural background were found to be important
determinants of an individual’s perception of the facility. Simply, the further away from the
landfill that a household was located, the less negative their responses were. The farmers located
closest to the landfill experienced more disamenities than those living farther away. They
experienced more traffic, garbage, vermin, and could see the landfill from their home. However,
farmers expressed more concern about the City of Chilliwack and its poor communication than
about their health, safety, or well-being. Indigenous respondents all lived along a smaller section
of Bailey Road located on the same southern side of the road as the landfill. These participants
expressed much greater concern for their health and safety, while also expressing frustration with
the presence of garbage, vermin, and heavy traffic along the road. While distance from the
landfill is likely a part of the differences in perceptions, cultural, economic, and social
backgrounds are also important considerations. Indigenous respondents were much more
homogenous in their concerns and experiences, reflecting a shared cultural background and
history that is rooted in place. They expressed similar levels of distrust towards the City of
Chilliwack, and many referenced the regions colonial history as a source of that distrust.
Despite the City’s confidence in the planning and engineering that keep residents and the
environment safe from the by-products of waste degradation, many individuals do not feel safe.
No matter what safety measures go in to the facility to ensure the safety of nearby residents,
these measures do nothing to make people feel safe if they are not properly communicated.
Respondents indicated the City does not communicate with them. For example, while
respondents were aware that the City planned to begin accepting asbestos waste at the landfill,
most were not aware of any additional safety measures and were not informed that the landfill
had already begun accepting asbestos. The stress that results from this uncertainty can go on to
create new health concerns, or exacerbate existing ones. Thus, the landfill may be producing
health risks regardless of the physical engineering and technologies that keep waste contained.
Furthermore, many poor communication and problematic understandings of Indigenous
consultation can reinforce the distrust that many Indigenous peoples feel towards government

79

bodies. Thus, the City is contributing to a much larger issue that goes beyond the Bailey Landfill.
This lack of adequate communication stems, in part, from the City’s problematic understanding
of consultation and expert knowledge.
The City has the authority to define what counts as an offsite impact, and what is
considered a risk, and these definitions influence their level of communication with the public.
Due to the City’s interpretation of the landfill as being relatively harmless, they do not maintain
contact with Bailey Road residents. Risks and impacts are not being defined by those who
experience the Bailey Landfill every day, despite being most equipped for the job. Bailey Road
residents are forced to incorporate the disamenities produced by the Bailey Landfill into their
day-to-day lives, but they are not being given any opportunities to contribute to the waste
management narratives that influence how the landfill is operated. By excluding these local
experts, the City is losing important knowledge about the landfill that can only be gained by
experiencing it every day. While it can be argued that landfill management is a wicked problem,
one with no objectively right solution, the City of Chilliwack can be doing much more to
understand what the problem is. By understanding the less tangible implications and complex
historical contexts of the Bailey Landfill, which can only come from engaging with local
communities, the City can create waste management services that do not further marginalize
unique, vulnerable communities.

80

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