After being in the works for most of this decade, the $14-million project to dredge and rejuvenate Burnaby Lake has been held up at the eleventh hour–by a turtle.

The Western painted turtle to be exact, an endangered red-listed species.

The City of Burnaby has all the environmental permits it needs to go ahead with the project, to remove 200,000 cubic metres of sediment from the lake, preventing it from turning into a bog, and returning it to an international-standard competitive rowing course.

All the permits, that is, but one–a salvage permit to allow city-contracted environmental workers to go ahead and remove all fish and wildlife, including the painted turtles, from the dredge zone (defined by a silt curtain that prevents sediment from escaping downstream), and place them on the other side of the screen out of harm’s way.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said city staff were told they couldn’t apply for the salvage permit until just before they were ready to start work. When they did, the provincial environment ministry turned them down.

“They don’t care that there’s machines sitting on the side of the water ready to go. They don’t care that we have procedures in place. They’re saying, ‘we forgot to tell you this and now we’re stopping you.’ “

The dredging work was supposed to start this week now that all the necessary equipment is in place. While the contractor is trying to keep busy with other aspects that don’t involve entering the lake, if the contract has to be terminated, it will cost city hall millions of dollars, Corrigan said.

“I still am completely stunned at the suggestion that we have done anything except comply at every stage. I mean, everybody in the western world has known that we were going in to dredge Burnaby Lake ... We have boasted a thousand times we’ve got all the environmental assessments and we’re ready to go.

“They really should rename that to the Ministry of Silly Walks,” he said, in reference to the Monty Python sketch. “It’s just absolutely absurd that we go through all of these processes and now we’re sitting there losing money while somebody plays silly games on a subject matter that has been dealt with a hundred times over.”

City hall is appealing the decision and hoping to lobby for support in Victoria, which is itself contributing $10 million to the project.

Corrigan noted that over the years he’s received anecdotal reports from pioneers and the likes of the late former mayor Bill Copeland that the Western painted turtle isn’t even native to the area.

“They brought them down from the Interior and their moms made them get rid of them and so they’d take them down to Burnaby Lake or Deer Lake.”

Whatever the case, provincial Environment Minister Barry Penner said the problem is one of Burnaby dragging its feet.

“Mayor Corrigan has either been asleep at the switch or is forgetting some important facts,” Penner said from Victoria.

The province issued an environmental assessment certificate in 2002, since renewed in 2007, which specifically set out criteria for protection of the Western painted turtle. “It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”

It wasn’t until Aug. 21 that the ministry received an application from the city for a permit to start investigation work for its turtle mitigation plan, which the ministry issued, Penner said. “They need to know where they are and how to extract them without killing them.”

On Aug. 31, it applied for the salvage permit.

“They haven’t given us enough information to warrant the issuance of that second permit and that’s because they only just got the first permit,” Penner explained. “Not enough research has been done yet to identify the location of the Western painted turtle.

“By leaving it this late in the season, the temperatures are dropping in the water and apparently as it gets cooler, the turtles go deeper in the lake and they become more difficult to find.”

The provincial government supports the project, hence the funding, but it also supports protecting the environment “and endangered species in particular,” Penner said.