• Protecting Water and Farmland in Simcoe County

Ostrander Point appeal will affect environmental law across Ontario

By
In AWARE News Network
Nov 18th, 2014
0 Comments
2231 Views
Blanding's Turtle - L.Crowley photo

from Cheryl Anderson Prince Edward County Field Naturalists

On Dec 8-9, PECFN will be defending the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) ruling that overturned the Ministry of the Environment’s approval of the Gilead wind turbine project.

We are appealing to the Appeal Court of Ontario because, subsequently, the Divisional Court overturned the ERT ruling.  The Divisional Court ruling became environmental law which rendered the ERT system powerless. Therefore PECFN’s appeal to the Appeal Court of Ontario is a precedent setting case that impacts the validity of the ERT, the Endangered Species Act (because the ERT ruled that development must not take place at Ostrander Point because it is the breeding habitat of the Blanding’s Turtle which is an endangered species) and the Environmental Protection Act (because it negates the power of the ERT to act to protect important habitat from degradation).  As such it will affect environmental law across Ontario.

Justice Blair, who granted a stay against any construction on the site until the matter is finally decided said, “the issues raised on the proposed appeal are issues of broad public implication in the field of environmental law”.

As usual, PECFN will be represented by Eric Gillespie assisted by Erin Wallace.  South Shore Conservancy and Nature Canada have received permission to intervene on our behalf.  On the other side Gilead and the Ministry of the Environment will be joined by Canadian Wind Energy Association.

We congratulate Natalie Smith on her new posting to Client Earth in London.  Natalie has been integral to our case and we are sorry that she has decided to go back to England, but wish her all the best in her new position.

Myrna Wood and Amy Bodman have written the following that I think is too good not to pass on to you:

“The Evening Grosbeaks appearing at bird feeders this fall are one of Canada’s declining species.  It has declined 78% in the last 40 years.  Other examples of species decline: our iconic Canada Warbler: 80%; Rusty Blackbird: 90%; Olive-sided Flycatcher 79%; Bay-breasted Warbler 70%.  And in September the World Wildlife Fund reported that animal populations have fallen on average by 52 percent since 1970. The findings pertain mostly to vertebrate species, including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles.

The root cause of these decimations is simple – loss of habitat. This loss of habitat and the species they support is a crisis for our planet superseded only by the projections of even worse decimations caused by climate change. Not only do we humans urgently need to stop the use of fossil fuels, we also need to urgently move to conserve the habitats of our remaining wildlife.

In order to stop fossil fuel use we must implement conservation by investing in retrofitting all 19th-20th century technology in our buildings and vehicles and begin to build alternative sources of power.  It is imperative that these new developments be sited in places that we humans have already removed from nature in order to preserve the scarce wildlife lands that remain.  New developments should not be sited in land that functions as significant habitat for wild species.

Our undeveloped wild places play a vital role in mitigating the effects of climate change.  Forests and wetlands sequester carbon keeping it out of the atmosphere, while tall grass prairies actually remove carbon from it. Wetlands prevent flooding and erosion and replenish our aquifers. Alvars and other seasonal wetland habitats filter contaminants, keeping them out of our streams and lakes. What allows these invaluable habitats to mitigate climate change are the wild species they support. Without these wild species, they will no longer function. Eventually they will cease to exist at all.

Prince Edward County’s South Shore is the last undeveloped land along the northern shore of Lake Ontario. If this industrial development is allowed to proceed it will be surrounded by another 29 turbines in the centre of the IBA and pave the way for hundreds of more turbines along Lake Ontario shorelines, including at Amherst Island which is world-renowned for the owl populations that overwinter there.  They will join Trans Alta’s turbine project on Wolfe Island which has caused the highest mortality rate of birds and bats in North America with the exception of Altamont pass in California and displaced the indigenous and wintering Red Tail Hawk and Short Eared Owl populations. A concentration of hundreds of industrial turbines along this intersection of two major migration corridors will form an impenetrable barrier, causing mounting declines for our migrating species and substantial degradation to the habitats along the migration routes that they stage in.“

Link to Save Ostrander Point

Leave a Reply

Commenters must post under real names. AWARE Simcoe reserves the right to edit or not publish comments. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *