Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
Volume 9, Number 4 • July-August 2001
Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat NewsThe Newsletter of the Great Lakes
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by Linda Pim, Federation of Ontario Naturalists
Paper giant Norampac Inc., continuing its litigious habits, has appealed to the Ontario Divisional Court an Environmental Review Tribunal ruling issued in June 2001 that would stop spreading of the dust suppressant Dombind on rural roads by October 2002. The company’s Trenton cardboard mill (near the mouth the Trent River, flowing into Lake Ontario) had insisted it needs permission to give away the dioxin-containing dust-buster to municipalities in 2003 as well, since it expects proposed waste treatment equipment at the mill won’t be fully operational until early 2004. Dombind is very harmful when it washes off roads into aquatic habitats, since it has a very high biological oxygen demand in addition to toxins such as furans, dioxins, and phenols. The Federation of Ontario Naturalists, the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations, Quinte Watershed Cleanup and several eastern Ontario residents, all represented by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, had sought an immediate ban on Dombind. The tribunal took the middle position by upholding the Ontario Ministry of the Environment’s order that permits Norampac to supply Dombind for spreading on roads for only one more year (2002) . The Ministry started trying to reign in Norampac’s use of Dombind in 1993 — isn’t nine years enough time for the company to get its act together?!
To help get an action plan in place to protect the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Ontario government appointed a 13-member advisory panel to chart a protection course. Included on the panel to plan for the 160-kilometre-long (100-mile-long) moraine, which forms the headwaters of 65 rivers and streams in south-central Ontario, are recently retired Federation of Ontario Naturalists executive director Ric Symmes, Debbe Crandall of the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) Coalition, and John Riley of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, as well as representatives of municipalities, conservation authorities, developers, the aggregate industry, and farmers.
Crafting the language for a comprehensive land-use plan by the time the six-month development freeze expires on November 17 is an ambitious task. But firm ground rules for the plan and a road map to get to the finish line can happen by then. Watch for updates on the FON’s website at www.ontarionature.org, STORM’s site at www.stormco.org, and the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing’s site at www.mah.gov.on.ca
Ontario environmental organizations have been almost uniformly cynical in their comments on the Ontario government’s so-called smart growth initiative. Smart growth is usually seen as a catch-phrase that means good land-use planning to curb urban sprawl and protect farmland and natural areas. But the Ontario government apparently wants to tack a “smart growth” label on just about anything that promotes economic development. For example, the government is using the smart growth moniker to promote a maze of highways planned for south-central Ontario, including new 400-series highways (freeways) and extensions to existing ones. While the government claims that more highways will solve traffic gridlock, environmental groups maintain that highways fuel sprawl and merely postpone and alter the location(s) of gridlock. The Province should completely restore the public transit funding it yanked in the late 1990s. Cynicism is also fostered by the fact that in the government’s recent smart growth leaflet, the words “urban sprawl” were never used. Yet sprawl is the main feature of the poorly planned urban growth we see in many parts of Ontario, and smart growth initiatives in other jurisdictions identify sprawl as the overriding problem. How can the problem be solved if the government refuses to identify what it is?! Watch for smart growth updates both on the website of the FON at www.ontarionature.org and on the government’s site at www.smartgrowth.gov.on.ca
Even though the federal government is appealing the recent federal court judge’s ruling that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act does not apply to the proposed Red Hill Creek Expressway, the City of Hamilton is laying plans to contract out tree-cutting in the valley this autumn to clear the way for expressway construction. It’s a mystery why city staff are recommending premature and potentially unnecessary clear-cutting of trees in the fall when they acknowledge that Ottawa’s court appeal could well lead to the requirement for a federal assessment of the proposed roadway. The Red Hill Valley is the last corridor of green space in Hamilton linking the Niagara Escarpment to the Lake Ontario shore. For updates, contact Friends of Red Hill Valley at www.hwcn.org/link/FORHV