Environment a political football in NVCA dispute

By Kate Harrries AWARE Simcoe October 12 2010
A year ago, Essa Mayor David Guergis travelled to Alliston to try and get the New Tecumseth Council to join a campaign to have the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority dissolved.
He was accompanied by Oro-Medonte Mayor Harry Hughes who was pushing to reduce conservation authority jurisdiction within his township.

This happened at a time of swirling controversy over a Canadian Tire store proposed for a property owned by Leesa Turnbull-Guergis, the Essa mayor’s wife. People questioned whether Dave Guergis was in a conflict of interest, particularly in reference to his participation at an NVCA executive meeting on March 13, 2009, which discussed the Canadian Tire project. (He denied a conflict and said he had a legal opinion to prove it.)
There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. The NVCA voted in April, 2010 to allow the Canadian Tire to go ahead, although it restricted development on a portion of the Turbull-Guergis property.
Dave Guergis (being challenged for re-election by Deputy Mayor Terry Dowdall) has regrouped. He’s no longer calling for the NVCA to be dissolved, proposing instead that that planning approval functions be shifted from the conservation authority to Simcoe County.
AWARE Simcoe has adopted a policy in support of current provincial regulation of development in flood plain areas.
Developers who buy land in sensitive areas should know that they may face restrictions on what they want to do. When developers are able to apply political pressure and build where it was previously not allowed, disaster can result.
An example: the Glen Cairn area of Ottawa, where hundreds of homes were flooded out by the Carp River in 1996 and 2002 and, in 2004, raw sewage backed into dozens of homes as well as a nursing home near the Kanata Research Park. The result: much personal anguish for residents and class action suits all round.
So, we need the expertise and knowledge that has been gained in more than half a century since the Hurricane Hazel disaster that prompted the province to set up the conservation authorities.
However, in a bureaucracy, obsession with regulation can overtake common sense and there are examples of citizens being beset by costly meaningless demands by conservation authorities. It’s wholly appropriate that our elected representatives should hold the conservation authorities to account and work to resolve issues on their behalf.
But that doesn’t mean they should dismantle a system that’s needed to protect life, property and the continued functioning of the environment.
In Essa, the issues are fairly clear-cut. Residents organized a meeting in July to ask the NVCA to answer allegations being made by Guergis supporter Archie Duckworth, running for council in Ward 1. Officials were able to prove Duckworth’s allegations to be unfounded, and the following day, council issued a strongly worded rebuttal of his claims.
In Oro-Medonte, it’s more of a tangled tale. The township falls within three watersheds – Lake Simcoe, Nottawasaga and the Severn Sound. These are regulated by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority and the NVCA, with some environmental services provided by the Severn Sound Environmental Association. Unlike the conservation authorities, the SSEA has no regulatory powers.
In 2002 Oro-Medonte council voted to expand the NVCA’s area of service into the Severn Sound area in order to have the whole township under the uniform regulatory regime provide by the conservation authorities. The NVCA’s area of responsibility increased from 20 per cent to 73 per cent of the township.
One of the issues candidates have been trying to address – within the 30-second confines of answers at all-candidates’ meetings – is the difference between the way LSRCA and the NVCA provide service.
NVCA board member Fred Nix – who represents Mono Township and is a past NVCA chair – explains: “Historically, the NVCA is a “general benefitting” conservation authority. That is, with the exception of one or two very big specific projects (eg, the Black Ash Creek channellization in Collingwood), all work and all expenses are on a watershed-wide basis.
“We figure out what we have to do, we figure out the cost, we set the budget, and then all municipalities pay their share of the budget based on assessment.”
The advantage is that the cost of all programs – for instance education at the Tiffin Centre for Conservation – are evenly shared. It also means that when the NVCA undertakes a special project – for instance the Bass Lake study in Oro-Medonte – theres’s no extra charge. All NVCA member municipalities share the cost of the $35,000 cost in staff time for that study.
LSRCA’s approach is “special benefitting.” There’s an administration levy, paid by all. And a special levy, allowing municipalities to opt in or out of programs and are charged extra for extra work.
Both conservation authorities are run by boards made up of councillors or appointees from the member municipalities  – so if Oro-Medonte wants to change the NVCA system, its representatives have to persuade the other council representatives that it’s a good idea.
Oro-Medonte has filed an appeal to the Mining and Lands Commission of the NVCA’s 2009 levy. Councillor Sandy Agnew, now running for deputy mayor and the lone voice on council speaking out for the NVCA these days, voted in favour of the appeal, supporting the call for a more detailed accounting of what was being paid for..
Agnew has since changed his position based, it appears, on what the appeal document actually said. Hughes cut off Agnew’s explanation at a recent council meeting, stating that the document is covered by confidentiality.
However, some insight into Oro Medonte’s intentions can be gleaned from a February 12, 2010 motion passed by the NVCA board, which refers to a mediation meeting on April 8, 2009, “at which the township’s representatives suggested that the matter could be resolved if the watershed boundaries were redrawn to revert to the pre-2003 borders (ie, remove the Severn portion from NVCA jurisdiction).”
This would be a serious step back, in view of the SSEA’s lack of staff and expertise. Furthermore, the Mining and Lands Commission does not have the authority to change boundaries.
At the September council meeting, Oro-Medonte voted to approve a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) detailing what services would be provided by NVCA and what by SSEA.
The NVCA board received the MOU at its September 17 meeting and referred it to its solicitor for review. That meant the township would not have the MOU in place before a September 28 deadline set by Mining and Lands Commissioner Daniel Pascoe for the parties to settle their differences, or the matter (postponed several times at O-M’s request) would proceed to a hearing.
It was time for Oro-Medonte to fish or cut bait. It filed its materials and the appeal is on – with the costs of every party in this dispute between public bodies being funded by the taxpayers.
On October 8, the NVCA board voted in favour of a motion moved by Nix and seconded by Collingwood Mayor Chris Carrier to defer action on the MOU until the levy appeal had been dealt with.
The reason, spelled out in a preamble to the motion, is that, in the opinion of the NVCA solicitor, “the material filed by Oro-Medonte is missing relevant information as ordered to be filed by the MLC on April 23 2010.”
The NVCA reasserted its intention to arrive at a MOU with Oro-Medonte. However, Agnew characterizes the agreement as impossibly complicated, so the fact that a solution will be decided by the next council looks like a good thing.
However, Hughes appears to have burnt some bridges at the NVCA.
“The Mayor of Oro-Medonte has made it very clear that appealing the levy was just a tactic to get what it wants from the NVCA,” says Nix. “No matter how justified it is to try to develop an MOU, it is not fair of Oro-Medonte to hold a gun to the head of the NVCA to get it.”
There’s another issue where the NVCA says Oro-Medonte is not playing fair – and that’s with regard to the reported increases in the levy that the township pays. More on that in a future posting.
This is difficult for voters to sort out. One thing is certain. We can’t allow the environment to become a political football at election time.