If you're driving north along Lawrence Hargrave Drive, just past Coledale hospital you'll see on the left a haphazard-looking development site on steeply sloping land overlooking the ocean. Orange and black plastic sheets are scattered over much of the denuded, muddy excavation. Hay bales, sandbags and barriers indicate attempts to control the red, sediment-filled water that, on most rainy days, still pours from the site, flooding the road, inundating neighbouring properties, flowing out across what was once a pristine rock shelf on its way to the ocean. It’s more than an eyesore, it’s an environmental disaster.

Two years ago, when residents first heard rumours that a development compan