Mr. Lalonde,

The Planning Act requires municipalities to oversee development applications for subdivisions.  Yet 1,567 signatures on a petition were required to ensure that City Council passed a motion on July 14 to direct staff to do what they should already have been doing all along – enforce oversight on a developer meeting the pre-conditions of subdivision development.

At a public meeting held the following night, it was obvious that planning staff had not read in detail the preconditions of subdivision development, nor could they explain why so many conditions were unmet given that the developer has already developed prior phases.  Staff were unable to produce any details or copies of the documents that were supposed to be approved, nor were they able to identify which plans must have updates prior to each phase of subdivision, nor could they identify the approval status of the storm water management plan.

Furthermore, it appears that City staff have become so lax in the oversight, validation, and verification of conditions of subdivision, that the developer, KNL/Urbandale,  has become upset about the City starting to exercise their duties and has filed a complaint with the OMB.

In conversations with city staff and with city councilors I am told that this lack of practice is to commonplace as to be accepted as normal business as usual.   Yet it is far from normal, and it is even further from being acceptable.   It is a mystery why our Mayor has not held the City Manager accountable for this incredible and ongoing failure. 

The area where this subdivision development is occurring is identified in the City of Ottawa’s Greenspace Master Plan fieldwork study as containing 3 of the most significant natural areas in the City.  Anything less than strict attention to the conditions of subdivision approval and to the applicable environmental studies (such as the Special Study conducted by the City in 2004) and subwatershed management  plans would be irresponsible, as well as being in violation of the City’s Official Plan and the City’s statutory obligations.

The area is so sensitive, and residents are so opposed to its development, that this subdivision has a special condition (Condition 11) that requires the developer, prior to each phase of development,  to produce and maintain a communications strategy regarding development plans, schedule, and status.  This condition has NEVER been met and staff cannot explain why they have allowed any development to proceed to-date without it having been met to the City’s satisfaction.

Will you conduct an immediate operational audit of this situation?

Regards,

Paul Renaud

Good Afternoon Mr. Renaud

 Thank you for your email and your interest in this file.

I have reviewed your concerns.  In our audit of the Development Review Process, we have identified similar issues to yours.  My understanding is that Management is addressing them.  Finally, all my resources are currently assigned to complete my 2010 audit plan.

For these reasons, I do not plan do conduct an operational audit of the project.

Respectfully,

Alain Lalonde CIA, FCGA
Auditor General
City of Ottawa

Mr. Lalonde,

How may I obtain a copy of your findings and the steps that Management claims to be taking to address them?

We are obviously concerned about the possibility for gaps between the audit of the overall process and the failures of this project to-date.  Since you do not intend to conduct an operational review of this specific project, it is only by comparing the project issues that we have encountered to the results of your audit that we can be assured that further gaps do not exist.  For example, as they might arise in the handling of environmentally sensitive development projects.

Also, understanding the remediation plan proposed by Management is important to satisfying the concerns of citizens that the steps Management is taking will be sufficient as measured in terms of this environmentally sensitive project.

Regards,
Paul Renaud

The Terry Fox Drive (TFD) extension is an excellent example of McNamara’s Fallacy in decision making.

Step1.  The City haphazardly commissions several piece-meal studies of the South March Highlands (SMH) area to identify existing ecological conditions and count species.  However, only easily studied vegetation is studied.  There are no comprehensive studies of fauna, insects and non-vascular plants.

Step 2.  Issues such as the size of eco-passages are ignored since the impact of the size on the effectiveness of eco-passages cannot be predicted (disregard what can’t be measured).   This leads to mitigation planned for TFD relying on experimental ideas whose effectiveness has no established scientific evidence at all (assigning an arbitrary value to them).

• Instead emphasis is placed on having several smaller (measurable, so more must be better) passages instead of fewer, larger (more costly) ones. 
• The location of these eco-passages is inferred from a 3-month winter study of wildlife movement because a summer study is too hard to do for the wide-variety of species affected.

Step 3. The long-term impact of losing ½ of SMH to development is never studied (too difficult to measure so don’t look at it at all).  The City has never examined its economic justification for TFD relative to its environmental impact (no cost/benefit analysis) because it is presumed that ecological value is unimportant (because it is difficult to measure).

Step 4. Councillor Wilkinson asserts that TFD can be ignored when promoting SMH as an NCC-owned wilderness park.  The the long-term effect of fragmentation of habitat and species kill-rate caused by TFD don’t exist (because they can’t be measured).

The reality is that the effect of TFD cannot be mitigated because it cannot be measured.  The very concept of mitigation depends on establishing an equal and compensating benefit to make up for the impact.  This is not possible when the impact cannot be measured.

The Precautionary Principle holds that where there is uncertainty regarding an approach that could cause significant harm, the uncertainty should be resolved before proceeding.

This principle is well established both in law and in medicine.  It is a statutory requirement in the European Union.  Perhaps it is also time for City Hall to apply it to the environmental assessment process too.

In the meantime, anyone that contemplates allowing TFD into the South March Highlands does so at great peril to the environment and to all the species that live in it.

According to the Census, only 26,000 people in Kanata live north of the Queensway and most of them live south of South March Highlands – Morgan’s Grant, Dunrobin, and North March being the only communities in the north end of Kanata.

Meanwhile there have been 4 roads built in Kanata to enhance north/south connectivity (in addition to the 4-land March Road) since TFD was planned in 2000:

• Hertzberg road now connects to TFD,
• Kanata Avenue links to Campeau and TFD,
• CastleFrank now crosses the Queensway,
• TFD links Centrum to Kanata south.

The City is also spending $18 M to upgrade Goulbourn Forced Road so that is will be a usable road. 

How many roads do 26,000 people need?

According to OCRI, high tech employment is lower now than it was in 2000 and is likely to be flat for the foreseeable future (click to enlarge):

Negative to Flat 10-year Growth In High Tech Employment

With the demise of Nortel, causing its parts sold off to foreign investors, we are unlikely to see significant employment growth returning to Kanata.

Who does the Councillor expect to use this road?

The Citizen chose not to challenge Councillor Wilkinson on how she expects to justify a park to the NCC when TFD extension will sever eco-connectivity to it.

Scientific studies have proven that the road severs both the existing park in Trilliam Wood and the future park that the Councillor wants to have south of the road.  The leading scientific expert on the area, Dan Brunton, has called the road a “Berlin Wall” because it creates an impassible obstacle that will kill any animal that tries to cross it.

The City’s own Forest and Greenspace Advisory Committee, consisting of an expert panel of ecological advisors, passed a unanimous resolution expressing “grave concerns about the ecological damage caused by the TFD extension”, denouncing the proposed mitigation measures as inadequate as well as the failure of the City to protect the area. 

The Ottawa Field Naturalists, Canadian Bio-Diversity Institute, Greenbelt Coalition, Riverkeeper, Ecology Ottawa, Sierra Club, Save Our Greenspace, and several other ecological and community groups have jointly issued a statement appealing that the road be abandoned.

In trying to promote a park and build a road, how does the Councillor expect to have her cake and eat it too?

Councillor Wilkinson is right in asking that the NCC extend the Greenbelt to embrace the South March Highlands.  The entire area should be a park that is out of the reach of the developer-driven planning at City Hall.

However when will the Councillor drop her support for a road that is no longer needed?

When will she rescind delegation of authority to City staff that enables them to approve developer plans for this area without public review?

If the Councillor were actually opposed to development in the area she would be using every mechanism available to her to delay it. 

When will she act as she speaks?

One can only wonder about why the Councillor floated a $100 M price tag for the purchase of land that cost considerably less for the developers to purchase.

In 2012, the land will soon be close to worthless from a developers’ perspective when habitat protection automatically kicks in as a result of Ontario’s Endangered Species Act. 

There are 17 species-at-risk identified with the South March Highlands, many of which currently reside in lands owned by developers.  With habitat protection, it will be very difficult and costly for developers to develop this area.

At some point, Ontario’s Ministry of the Enviornment will also get serious about dealing with the Radon gas that is embedded in the granite beneath the area.  This gas will be released by any blasting done for development and is already a health hazard for existing residents of North Kanata.

Environmental mitigation for radon gas emissions will make it harder for developers to sell homes in the area.

Without the road, developers will have to rework their draft plans for subdivisions, involving costly engineering work.  And even if the road is allowed to proceed, the environmental assessment process for development in such a sensistive area should be subject to lengthy public review.

Selling the land to the NCC at even cost plus 10% makes better business sense from a developer’s perspective because it creates more economic cash flow than tying up expensive capital for diminishing returns.

It appears that the Councillor is not experienced in the art of business negotiation, so why is she batting about high price tags?   Is it because the City is too accustomed to giving developers whatever they want?

Ecology Ottawa, Do_Developers_Run_City_Hall, examined campaign funding by developers for City Councillors in the last election.  It will be interesting to see how much funding from developers goes to Wilkinson and other candidates in this year’s election.

Ecology Ottawa also tracks the environmental voting record of all City Councillors and it will be very interesting to see if there is any inverse correlation between the declining environmental grades given to several councillors and any increased campaign contributions they receive from developers in the upcoming election. 

As an example you can see from page 2 of postcard-and-grades, the Councillor for North Kanata’s environmental record has deteriorated from a B to a C-D rating since the last election.

While we are looking at the long hand of developers, we should also ask why doesn’t the City’s editorial board ever allow its reporters to challenge the road? 

Could it have something to do with the significant amount of advertising revenue from the City of Ottawa each year? 

Or perhaps the massive amount of advertising revenue from advertising from developers.  This volume is enough to justify a whole section of the paper each week called “New Homes”.

The City should have disclosed that TFD will result in a net total annual emission of 90,324 Tonnes of GHG per year.

 The calculation for this is:

• GHG increased by volume of traffic x amount of time of traffic on road.
  • Use avg traffic volume x 24 hrs x avg GHG emission per hour per vehicle
  • Assuming peak to average ratio is 10:1 and that peak hour volume is 2 hours x morning & afternoon
  • US EPA: light duty vehicle (incl passenger car but not SUV and miniVANs) = 337 gCO2 per mile
  • US EPA: SUV, miniVAN, pickup trucks are approx 1.3 x worse
  • US EPA: Combined Cars & Trucks = 1.13 x passenger = 1.13 x 337 = 380.81 gCO2 per mile driven
  • 380.81 x 1.6 = 609.296 gCO2 per km per vehicle = 0.6 kg CO2 per km
  • TFD is 4.8 Km long = 0.6 x 4.8 = 2.88 Kg CO2 per vehicle
  • Using unconstrained modal split disclosed in the 2004 EA Traffic Study of 8950 vehicles per hour (In+Out) 8950 x 2.88 = 25776 Kg CO2 per peak hr
  • 8 x 25776 / 1000 = 206.208 tC per day from peak plus 16 x .1 x 25776 / 1000 = 41.2416 tC non-peak per day
  • 206.2 + 41.24 = 247.44 tC per day x 365 = 90,315.6 tC per annu
• GHG absorption decreased by loss of forest cover due to clear-cutting for the road:
  • Use hectares removed by road times GHG absorption per hectare
    • 4.67 ha Dry-Fresh Sugar Maple-Ironwood Deciduous Forest
    • 0.34 ha Dry-Fresh White Ash-Hardwood Deciduous Forest
    • 5.61 ha Fresh-Moist White Pine-Hardwood Mixed Forest
    • 0.37 ha Young Deciduous Forest
    • 4.67 + 0.34 + 5.61 + 0.37 = 10.99 ha
  • 10.99 x 0.75 = 8.2425 Tonnes Carbon absorbed per year
  • According to David Suzuki Foundation, other GHG removal per hectare of forest is 60 kg/ha = 0.06 t/ha
    • 0.75 + 0.60 = 1.35 GHG per ha
  • 10.99 x 1.35 = 14.8365 Tonnes of GHG per year

 Net change in GHG = 90315.6 + 8.24 = 90323.84 Tonnes per year

The analysis used in the previous section is based on the City of Ottawa’s own traffic study statistics which are based on unreasonable traffic volumes.  Nonetheless the City was obligated to disclose the impact based on the numbers that they used to justify the road.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) was also obligated to ensure that the disclosure was accurate.  How could they have accepted an error of over 90 MegaTonnes of GHG emission?

We deserve much more responsibility and accountability from our public servants at both the Municipal and Federal levels!

Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) doesn’t help matters because, under Section 32, ministreies do not have to provide an opportunity for public comment for permits issued to implement a project that has been approved by the EAA.

This means that once an MCEA project is approved by the filing of a Notice of Completion for the EA that was done, there is only a narrow 30-day window in which it can be challenged. 

Even though the project may not be implemented for years afterward, or may even be changed in scope subsequently, there is no opporuntity for further public intervention in the process.

Meanwhile a municipality can make significant changes, apply for permits, and obtain approvals for those changes all without public review and comment.  Depending on the permit application involved, there may be a limited window for comments on the application, but this is spotty and relies on public monitoring of little-known registries where these permit applications are posted.

Take the example of permits to take water.  Private-sector proposals to take water from wells, streams or lakes are posted on the Ontario Environmental Registry for public comment in case there may be concerns about significant environmental impact.  If the public continues to have concerns once a permit to take water is issued, the EBR provides the right to request an appeal.  An independent tribunal applies strict criteria to decide whether or not to grant the appeal, hears the case if an appeal is granted, or facilitates a settlement.

But if a municipality wants to take water, it is only required to go through an EAA process and no EBR notice is required.  Hence a change to a project involving the routing of a storm or sanitary sewer can be done silently after the 30-day Notice of Completion window has expired. 

The public misses important opportunities to provide input on municipal water-taking approvals even though water quality and quantity issues have been of concern for many Ontarians since the Walkerton incident.

The net result is that:

• municipalities can and do assert that they are compliant with the EA process when often they are not.  In fact, they can make a total mockery of the process and get away with it.
• the municipal EA process is effectively regulated by a non-governmental body having no public accountability.
• there is no ecological natural “environment” expertise mandated in the EA process at all.
• there are no checks on the process and even if there were, there are no balancing forces to assure the outcome intended by the EAA.
• there is no tribunal that the public can appeal to when a municipality violates their trust.  Their only recourse is an expensive application to the court system where they will face an opponent funded by their own tax-dollars!

Is this how we want to protect our environment?