NVCA fax on Turnbull property went astray

By Kate Harries WaterWatch
Essa’s committee of adjustment is reconsidering a severance it approved for Leesa Turnbull, the wife of Mayor David Guergis, on a Mill St. property she wants to sell to Canadian Tire.
That’s because a letter from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority objecting to Turnbull’s application was not presented to the committee when it made its decision last month.
“Apparently a fax had gone astray,” said committee member Lee Redmayne, who chaired today’s meeting.
As a result, the committee, meeting on Oct. 22, did not know of an Oct. 20 letter to the committee in which the NVCA objected because “the elevation of the property appears to be primarily below the one-in-one-hundred-year flood elevation… and therefore within the floodway where development and site alteration is prohibited or restricted.”
The NVCA letter suggested deferral pending completion of additional technical studies by consultants that might show development could take place safely.
There was only a narrow window for appeal of the committee’s decision to the Ontario Municipal Board – to Nov. 13.
On Nov. 11, the NVCA’s executive committee sanctioned an OMB appeal unless a condition is attached to the approval of the severance requiring that “the applicant/developer demonstrate to the satisfaction of the NVCA that the proposed development is consistent with the two-zone floodplain management policies of the Provincial Policy Statement and the (Essa) Official Plan.”
Turnbull appeared before the committee to challenge the accuracy of the floodplain mapping that’s being used. “My property is not in a floodway, floodplain, whatever they’re calling it,” she said. “There has never been flooding.”
Committee member Robert O’Brien agreed that in 53 years he had “never seen flooding on the property” – at 305 Mill St., adjacent to the property that Turnbull sold to Loblaws for the No Frills store.
He expressed outrage that the NVCA appealed to the OMB.
Turnbull said two “respected consultants” had told her that Essa’s two-zone flood policy would allow her to proceed, adding that a church has received approval from the NVCA to build on a Highway 90 property that floods every year.
She asked the committee to approve the severance, ask the township to issue a building permit and ask the township to request that the NVCA do the same.
Tremayne proposed to two NVCA officials who were present at the meeting that – as neither the consent to severance nor the sale affect topographical and hydrogeological conditions – the onus of meeting NVCA requirements be moved to the development stage of the process.
Thus, the condition imposed could be changed to require “the developer” instead of “the applicant/developer” to demonstrate there won’t be flooding, she suggested.
NVCA resource planner Tim Salkeid stated that the NVCA would want to work with both applicant and developer and warned that approval at this stage could create a lot that’s not developable.
Joan Truax, the third committee member present, did not offer an opinion.
Turnbull asked for the matter to be deferred to the December committee meeting.