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PROVINCIAL KARST OWNERS CRITICIZED
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by
Don McLean
July 2- 8, 2009 |
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Brad Clark says the Ontario Realty Corporation “misrepresented” city documents at a June 17 meeting on the Eramosa karst lands. The provincial land management agency is also being criticized by a citizens’ group trying to have karst feeder lands permanently protected – an 80 acre parcel that the ORC wants the city to remove from a protected designation.
“They completely misrepresented to the public what the city’s position was,” Clark charged last week. “They told the public that they had not seen the official plan [and] that they didn’t see the mapping for the natural core area. They indicated a number of issues which were just completely off base.”
The councillor sought assurances from staff that the rare geological feature of caves and underground streams will remain in the core natural heritage area in the new official plan.
“We’ve told them that we’re not changing our position,” responded department head Tim McCabe. “It’s supported by the conservation authority, and we’re moving forward based on our recommended mapping.”
Clark was unhappy about a last minute letter from the ORC asking that their lands “be treated the same as other privately owned properties located within the ANSI [Area of Natural and Scientific Interest] feeder area.”
The provincial agency donated the most sensitive 190 acres of the karst lands to the Hamilton Conservation Authority in 2006, but wants residential development permitted on the parcel to the north and west of the intersection of Rymal Road and Second Road East in upper Stoney Creek.
ORC argued at their June 17 open house that this approach “does not result in negative impacts to the ANSI” because “there are no karst features on the land, with the exception of a small previously in–filled sink-point, and therefore no direct effects on karst features of the ANSI.”
The findings of the controversial environmental assessment done by the ORC also contend that storm runoff through the feeder streams in the area “can be effectively mitigated” and that selling the lands for development “provides a balanced economic return to Ontario and Hamilton taxpayers”.
The city’s new official plan says “the feeder area provides water flows which are important to the continued functioning and development of the karst features with the core area”. But it permits development if stringent conditions are met including substantial maintenance of the flow from the feeder creeks and improvement of their water quality, as well as measures “to reduce the risk of contamination … that would significantly impact groundwater and the karst.”
While reiterating his personal wish “to see all of the land preserved”, Clark thanked planning staff for what he called a “defensible position” in the face of difficult discussions with the provincial agency.
“I know staff have expressed the frustration of dealing with the ORC on this file because it’s almost like there’s too many cooks boiling the broth down there,” he noted. “You never know who you’re talking to down at the ORC when you’re trying to get an answer on this particular property.”
In the wake of the ORC’s open house, the citizen group Friends of the Eramosa Karst criticized the agency for spending “hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on studies” to justify development of the area, while ignoring opposing views.
“All concerns previously presented by the public and by public agencies have been minimized and dismissed,” charges the group in a media release last week. “The level of disregard for this ANSI is unbecoming of a provincial agency.”
The new official plan, the first for the amalgamated city, was finalized at a special city council meeting this past Monday. V
[DON MCLEAN]
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