Risky business
by Bob Gordon
Despite long-standing opposition, the City of Guelph’s Hanlon Creek Business Park (HCBP) will not go away. The city, having annexed 1,489 hectares of land from Puslinch Township in 1993 and having committed 271 of these to the building of what Guelph mayor Karen Farbridge describes on her blog as “a model for other municipalities to follow,” has since faced heavy resistance to its plans. For more than a decade, a number of conservation organizations and local residents have expressed concern that this land is too important to the ecological integrity of the area to be paved over.
A new local organization called Land Is More Important Than Sprawl (LIMITS) is now spearheading opposition to the development. “The project will be devastating to the whole complex ecosystem and result in a variety of species being extirpated,” says member Melanie Sohm. According to the LIMITS website, surveys of the proposed HCBP site found that it is home to at least 112 species of birds, 20 species of reptiles and amphibians, 16 species of mammals and 270 species of plants and trees. Most notably, perhaps, is the presence of a hop-hornbeam tree that is estimated to be at least 250 years old, making it one of the oldest of its kind in the province. While the grove in which it is located is to be spared, the city’s plan calls only for protection one metre beyond the tree’s dripline (the area directly located under the outer circumference of the tree branches). According to Chris Morrison, an arborist with Maple Hill Tree Services, “80 percent of the tree’s root system potentially extends beyond the protected zone, and the tree will be adversely impacted if the soil is disturbed up to only one metre beyond the dripline.”
Indeed, the voices of concern cannot grow much louder than they already are. Local Sierra Club representative Judy Martin is worried that the requisite grading and paving will considerably alter the flow of surface water and risk warming Hanlon Creek to the point at which it can no longer support brook trout. The development is also located on the Paris-Galt moraine in the catchment area of the Downey aquifer, the source of 20 percent of the City of Guelph’s drinking water. According to James Gordon of Wellington Water Watchers, “it threatens the groundwater recharge of the moraine … [while] increased industrial activity in this sensitive area raises the potential for toxic materials to seep into [Guelph’s] drinking water.”
The discovery of a hybrid Jefferson and blue-spotted salamander in the area in May complicates the matter. The Jefferson salamander is identified as a threatened species under the federal Species at Risk Act and Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, as is the western chorus frog, also present on the site. However, these two pieces of legislation have jurisdiction only over federally and provincially owned land, respectively. The city, as the majority landowner and managing partner in the development, has no legal obligation to take action related to these designations.
At present the city’s consultants, Natural Resource Solutions Inc., continue to monitor the situation and are attempting to identify the salamander’s breeding pond. Meanwhile, the city is involved in discussions with the Ministry of Natural Resources to determine how the presence of the salamander affects plans for future development of the park. In June, however, the city issued a site alteration permit that authorized Cooper Construction to commence site grading on a 1.5-hectare parcel in the southeast corner of the planned development.
Paul Smith on Mon, 16th Nov 2009 3:29 am
It is disappointing that Ontario Nature would publish “Risky Business” by Bob Gordon that misrepresents the status of the Hanlon Creek Business Park in Guelph and contains some gross inaccuracies. As well the Guelph Field Naturalists–ameber group of Ontario Nature–are not quoted while they have been actively involved in this issue.
The key issue now is the overheated rhetoric and obscene and violent behaviour of protestors that occupied the site illegally during the summer. These same protestors uttered threats, spit and shouted obscenities at a recent event at the site.
Bob Gordon fails to talk about the protestors use of exaggerated and inaccurate words to describe the Hanlon Creek Business Park. “Pristine wetlands”, “wilderness”, and “old growth forest” are among the inappropriate phrases applied to the site.
The facts about the site are quite different. The city’s Environmental Advisory Committee, of which I am chair, has spent many hours over several years reviewing the City’s environmental impact reports and walking the site. The public discussion about this site should be grounded in facts, not myths.
The lands of the Hanlon Creek Business Park are similar to many undeveloped lands across the city and surrounding Wellington County: farmland, corn fields, streams with many impacts, wetlands affected by artificial drainage and invasive species, young regenerating forests. Far from unique, pristine or wilderness. Yet the key natural features do deserve protection and our Committee supported the City’s environmental reports on the site, subject to 17 different environmental conditions which we expect the City to meet.
Old growth forests, using any scientific definition of this term, do not exist on this site. In fact most of the forests are relatively young. Some older heritage trees found along Forestell Road are protected under the current plan. The term old growth forest means that the forest ecosystem has specific physical and biological features, such as a lack of disturbance by humans, characteristic old growth plant and animal species, large, old living and dead standing trees, and trees in all age classes.
Western Chorus Frog is found at the site and at other sites in the city and surrounding regions. This species was recently declared not-at-risk in Ontario, while nationally one population of the species is listed as threatened due to declines in other provinces. Yet Bob Gordon inaccurately claims this species is at risk in Ontario.
The endangered Jefferson Salamander may be found at the site, or not. Certainty of this species’ occurrence is tough to establish due to its reclusive habits and difficulties separating it from “hybrids” that combine genetic characteristics of the Jefferson and the more common Blue-spotted Salamander. Ontario’s new Endangered Species Act imposes strong protections on the Jefferson Salamander. Bob Gordon incorrectly states that the Endangered Species Act apples only to “provincially owned land.”
The Hanlon Creek Business Park contains provincially significant wetlands, streams, and other ecological features that deserve protection. But there are other lands within the business park that can be developed in a sustainable manner. Achieving environmental, social and economic objectives concurrently is what sustainability is all about. Let’s have a civil discussion about the facts and forget the myth about fictitious “old growth wilderness”.
Many local progressive organizations have endorsed teh idea that most of the land slated for development should be developed for employment in the city. The Guelph Civic League the Council of Canadians have taken such positions. Yet Bob Gordon does not mention any of this.
Quite disappointing for Ontario Nature to condone such biased reporting.