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Serious sprawl decisions John Barber 16 June 2005 The Globe and Mail (All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.)
On Monday, the McGuinty government passed the Places to Grow Act, the crowning piece in a complex arrangement of laws and regulations designed to prevent sprawl by concentrating development in the Golden Horseshoe and protecting its remaining open spaces.
Yesterday, a committee of politicians in the sprawling York Region decided unanimously to drive a huge new sewer pipe through the heart of the protected land, in clear violation of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan that established the first high standards of the tough new planning regime. It would be gratifying to report that the politicians in question are all knuckle-dragging morons in thrall to the development industry. Such a scenario would be simple to understand and its potential resolution — quick provincial intervention to overrule their decision — would be easier to anticipate. In fact, however, they are all more or less reasonable people acting on the best advice of experts. Thanks to the insistence of Environment Minister Leona Dombrowsky, regional officials extended every courtesy to the environmental and resident groups that expressed an interest in the influential new pipe, potential handmaiden of serious sprawl. The groups even received funding to hire their own experts, one of whom warned that the officials favouring a route through the moraine had clearly failed to take proper account of the provincial conservation plan protecting it.
Then the officials went ahead and recommended the moraine route anyway, essentially because it would be easier and marginally cheaper to build a sewer through undeveloped rural land than it would be to build one down Yonge Street Otherwise, both routes scored well. Although the province's conservation plan prohibits such infrastructure from penetrating the moraine except when “there is no reasonable alternative,” York chose the moraine route for the sake of simple convenience: to avoid going to the trouble encountered by real cities when they undertake such projects. Nothing could demonstrate the fragility of the new regime better than the casual ease with which local officials choose to violate it.
Regional officials and politicians argue that the moraine route will not create excessive pressure to develop the land it crosses because of all the new provincial and regional legislation now protecting it. It's a hard argument to make in a region shaped to such a high degree by the location of sewer pipes, without the aid of any other plan. But considering how quick those same officials and politicians have been to bend those rules, it becomes cynical.
“The 19th Avenue option will ensure that there will be immense development pressure on Richmond Hill's green field sites for decades to come,” Josh Matlow of the environmental group Earthroots told the committee, adding that the region's unwillingness to address the issue is “a glaring omission” in its plans.
For a realistic appraisal of development pressure and how it works, consider the fate of the Duffins-Rouge Agricultural Preserve in Pickering. When it first tried to sell off those protected lands almost a decade ago, the Harris government argued that local zoning controls would be good enough to keep them agricultural forever. But after yielding to public pressure, it encumbered the lands with easements that stipulate they remain undeveloped. The McGuinty government later included them in its no-development greenbelt.
And now the Pickering council has cancelled the easements in return for millions of dollars in fees from developer Silvio De Gasperis, and has joined him in demanding they be urbanized despite all the rules forbidding just that.
The new laws mean nothing without enforcement. Clearly it's time for the bad cop to step up.
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