SPECIAL REPORT: Four fatal flaws in Places to Grow legislation

Enforcement failures by an environment ministry dedicated to business, with no care for dwindling water supplies
By Sharon Yovanoff AWARE Simcoe December 15 2010
The Places To Grow legislation and its proposed Amendments are in my opinion not a bad piece of work. Keeping growth to areas capable of absorbing a larger population makes sense. Stretching it over 25 years or to 2031 is also a good idea. The glitch here is the Townships, who will give away the population number increases in the first 5 years and then bitch that they are being penalised and not allowing them more growth after 2015! But, that would have been their choice and the developers’, who will kick up a stink. You can’t please everyone! Unfortunately the Growth nodes don’t see the opportunity they have been given to lay out the new part of their city into a well thought-out traffic grid to avoid another Bayfield in Barrie!
On the whole it’s a good document. Unfortunately there are 4 areas that have not been factored into this Plan. It’s the 4 flaws that seem to show up in far too many documents, I’ve read over the last 9 years. The Oak Ridges Moraine Act, Water Source Protection, the Clean Water Act and others. These flaws are its failure to be effective. It doesn’t seem to make any difference what party is in power, because it is the bureaucrats that are in charge of the bill in the long run. Of course MPPs stick their nose into things to gum up the works. I’m unsure if these glitches are deliberate or not thought out clearly, but they are serious and will bring any bill to its knees.
The first is Enforcement! How is the Ministry of Infrastructure going to make the County and the Townships toe the line? We all know that the Townships are like a fiefdom. Some more so than others!  Will they abide by the number of people they have been allotted? I’d say, no ! I think we will be seeing far more developers finding paperwork that sets them down as pre April 2005 when the Places To Grow came in to being. Laws were meant to be bent, twisted and outright broken in Simcoe!
How will they enforce the law against this type of fraud? A prime example of this fraud is Colgan, in the Township of Adjala-Tosorontio. It’s a 71-home hamlet, with 213 people, a small primary Catholic School and a church. Nothing about it screams… development! It’s the kind of place the Ministry does not want growth in! It is a rural farmland area. So the Township announced that the Ministry of Infrastructure was forcing them to build here under the Places To Grow Act, on flat Grade A farmland. ‘It was all the Province’s fault!’ Their first misinformation in making people believe it was not their fault, they were forced to do it!
Then the Township announced in 2008 that Colgan had been a settlement area since 1972 and it was a hard-line boundary that made it acceptable under the Places to Grow Act. I suppose a soft line was unacceptable. The problem is that no one had ever heard of such a thing. The phrase Settlement Area had not come into being during this time, in the context that they are using now. Even those of us that lived direct beside this hard line, before the boundary existed, had never been informed of its creation. Yet they knew exactly where to send our tax bill. Saying it was unmovable or tough or whatever hard line means in their thinking, makes it acceptable to build!
Ironically somewhere in the papers I’d read before this came up, stated that there had been no settlement boundary until 2005. Amazingly that is when the first developer showed up on the scene and  only, when it first was brought up in the Act did they react to it. Backdating boundary lines to fit the Places To Growth Act and losing the paperwork will be the first in a series of  manoeuvres the Townships will pull to get the developers on the right side of the Act.
Our Township used a Farmers Retirement Home Severance to create the illusion that one of the two developIt doesn’t seem to make any difference what party is in power, because it is the bureaucrats that are in charge of the billers’ submissions was before the April 2005 date that the Act was passed. On February 28th. 2005, the Sutherlands requested a small acreage to be severed off to build a retirement home on. The residents around them had to May 9th 2005 to respond in a negative or positive way. After May 9th., they got their approval. In April 2006 the neighbours received their first letter asking our opinion on the pending severance on the very same lot. A second letter arrived in the first week in May 2006, stating that the Conservation Authority had said that they could not build so close to a run off ditch and were now asking for almost 4 hectares. We didn’t object, despite our declining water availability. What was one more house ! The fact that the letters were over a year late in coming broke the law! This was an illegal severance in more than one way.
In June 2006 the developer had his first open house. People were in shock to know that not just this developer, but a second and possibly a third and fourth were going to build in the west side of Colgan. It was the first we’d heard of it ! In August 2006 there was a second open house showing that the Farmers Retirement Home was now a sewage plant with storm water ponds. We had not agreed to this, but they had got their severance under false pretences. It is illegal not to inform the public of an impending severance. Secondly they were changing the designation of the severance. We were told by the Planner that the developer had the right to do what they wished with the property.
I realise that farmers get these severances to sell to a builder to get a little retirement money. But, they are retiring and a house is always built on the lot!  People understand the need for them to do this. The Sutherlands of Wayland Farm Inc., did not qualify in one aspect of the rules and regulations for such a severance. They were not of retirement age, they had not had the land for 10 years, nor had they worked the land daily. The obvious one was that the Sutherlands would not be working after the retirement. They are developers! I am positive that if we had set up a pig farm or garbage dump, after our land was severed for a home, we would have been charged or at least stopped. But the Sutherlands could do with it what they wished! When we asked one of their people when this severance had been designated a sewage plant and storm water ponds, the answer was over a year ago. It is obvious that the Township went along with it and denied the public their say. How many back room deals have already been made in Simcoe like this one ? I suspect that they will come out soon enough!
Ironically, when we requested from the Municipality, through the Freedom of Information Act, for a copy of the two letters that had been sent out to the public in 2006, we were told that they had thrown them out because the file was too thick and there was a lack of filing room. It was  only two pieces of paper! We saw the file in Gerry Caterer’s hands as she said this and the Township had moved into a brand new spacious building!
This is also illegal to destroy any paperwork associated with a development! But, this is how the Township justified the Sutherlands’ right to fall outside of the Places to Grow Act. They thought by destroying these letters there was no proof! It’s easy to do! Who would notice or ask for such paperwork ? Who is there to question dates or anything else for that matter ?
It is likely that other Townships will pull such phony paperwork out of the dusty files. They will find hard boundaries around improper paces to grow, applications dated before the bill came in…. The Sutherlands had to be outside the legal definition of growth to build, because Colgan has no sewage system, their water is disgusting and was so in 2005 and has been for the last decade. There are no jobs or infrastructure in this 3 street hamlet…. Nothing to fit the requirements of the Places To Grow Act!  Ironically the developer that did fall under the act is now piggy backing onto the Wayland Farms Inc. Group to avoid some of the pitfalls. They are using the OMB and the Township to build in an area that is inappropriate! This is the type of fraudulent building  that developers will be doing across Simcoe County . They buy land cheaply in rural areas and get creative! So who  is going to stop this?  And how? Keenansville in the Township of Adjala-Tosorontio, was created as a Settlement Area in 2008, using 1870s boundaries, despite the fact they have no water or sewage and there are only 56 homes. Doug Little, the Deputy Mayor then, said they needed to do this to get infrastructure money!  You can see how Townships can manipulate things to suit their needs and those of the developers to get around the Places To Grow Act. We’d like to know who’s wanting to build in water strapped Keenansville !
What is the  Ministry of Infrastructure doing about these cases?  How will they rein in these Townships or penalize them for their illegal actions? When we asked the representatives of the Ministry at the Toronto meeting about this, they looked dumfounded! It was as if they couldn’t believe that such a thing could happen. The Townships just had to obey the letter of the law. They obviously hadn’t come up to Simcoe!
This Ministry has to also do something about the Ontario Municipal Board! The Ministry representatives were shocked when we said that the OMB considered the Places To Grow Act, a guideline that it wasn’t complete. The latter idea more than likely came from the Proposed Amendment. If we were to take that attitude, all laws would be considered to be just guidelines and we would live in a state of anarchy! The representatives once more were shocked and suggested that we misunderstood the OMB man. We hadn’t! Not only did he say this, but the Planners and engineers for the County, Township, and the two developers all turned to the people at the hearing and adamantly concurred. We of course, knew better, but participants had no right to say so!
When we did have a say, I brought up the severance and its legality. It was as if I’d stuck a stick in a hornet’s nest. The OMB guy said it was irrelevant and old business, that did not have anything to do with the hearing. Yet without this phony severance these developers would not have gotten to the OMB. The lawyers, jumped on me as if I was a raging fire out of control. Even after I spoke, Betty Sutherland [developer] and  Adjala-Tosorontio Planner Gerry Caterer rushed me saying I didn’t understand the severance. They looked panicky! They knew I knew! So how did the OMB hearing go? Just as we expected. They are allowed to proceed when they get the last of their paperwork done. The County, Township and the two developers even agreed on the sewage plant, the division of the number of homes built in the three stages and we were left twiddling our thumbs !  So much for justice!
Ironically , the second developer, Winzen,has yet to have an open house. They have had so many new and improved plans, we have no idea where he is at or what he is doing. We suppose that that stage has been skipped over because of the OMB’s ruling! So what exactly will he build? The 170 bed nursing home and strip mall will be built in the third phase, “if there is enough water .” As they put it. We see it as a carrot on a stick for the Ministry of Infrastructure to believe they are creating jobs. Unfortunately, these two developers have known since 2006 that there is no water in the area. When over a 100 people cram into the Township hall to express this very topic, with both developers present, it’s hard not for them to know. Yet the Council insisted at that time there was enough water for 443 new builds. Of course they tested the well in January of 2006, before Woodington Lake Golf Course got their permit to take 5.74 million litres a day to water grass. In April, when they filled their ponds in 6 days, welwent belly up all over the area. The Engineers of all parties insisted it would be too hard to calculate what affect Woodington would have on the water supply, because they were in New Tecumseth Township. The north-west corner of the golf course sits in Colgan. But, the Township still had enough water for the developers. None of this was brought up at the OMB hearing.
The Places To Grow Act was just brushed aside. Maybe the Ministry was forcing the Township to build in Colgan like the Township had adamantly insisted, was the case from 2006 onward! Or as I suspect, they were ignoring Ontario Law. If Adjala-Tosorontio, a little nothing Township can get away with it so far, you better believe that the other larger and more aggressive Townships will be doing the same with the help of the OMB or have already done so. How many cases lately have gone to the OMB with similar results? It’s as if the OMB has more power than the Province! Who’s running the show?
The Ministry of Infrastructure has to get a handle on the OMB. These illegal, if not immoral judgments in favour of development that are not in line with the laws of the Places To Grow Act have to be dealt with. The decisions of the OMB need to be rescinded and the guilty parties prosecuted. Firing of the OMB representative would not be unjust! How many other OMB hearings have been stacked against the people in this way?
The third problem is the Ministry of Environment. Here we have a Ministry out of control, dedicated to business! Business, that is destructive to the environment. The Ministry of Infrastructure talks about protecting the natural environment, undertaking a strategy for water and waste water, and helping mitigate the environmental impacts of growth. Nice thoughts! So is maximizing environmental sustainability and minimizing growths ecological footprint, that will protect hydrological areas like the Oak Ridges Moraine. So, is this really going to happen, when in fact the Ministry of Infrastructure has no control over these issues ? First off the Oak Ridges Moraine is governed by the Ministry of Housing and Rural Affairs and water is governed by the Ministry of Environment. Housing and Rural Affairs shirk their duty on the moraine and often leave things to Townships and the Ministry of Environment. So we have a part of the Act that cannot be enacted upon because it is not part of their jurisdiction.
Let’s get serious. The Ministry of Environment’s track record when it comes to water in south Simcoe is dismal. For instance, they have allowed a large water taking at Woodington Lake Golf Course. 1.44 million litres a day for the club house, 5 million litres a day for the greens, which was once 5.74 million, before the second fight the residents had with the MOE. They gave them 10% of the Beeton Creek tributary and a new well. The tributary of the Beeton Creek springs from Natural Core in Adjala. A stones throw away, from the new wells in Adjala for Colgan. Which the Township claims will sustain 443 new builds or much less depending on the time of year or the phases of the moon. The two wells for the club house are about a half kilometre from the creek’s headwaters and Adjala’s wells. Tottenham’s main well in Coventry Park is about 3 kilometres east of the club house.  All of these are parallel to each other, within 4 kilometres of one another, on the Oak Ridges Moraine or just off it.  We also must consider the wells of the individual residents between all these big water hitters
It would seem that the MOE takes each case individually with no regard to any surrounding large water users. That a town the size of Tottenham, that has had to go on water rationing every spring to fall, for years, wants to add another 1,800 homes, should ring alarm bells at the MOE. Especially since Woodington Lake golf course complained of running out of water to irrigate in 2008. That’s when the MOE gave them another well. Colgan is on water rationings every year to and the people on private wells have done the same. The MOE knows all this and still they gave the Township leave to “give the water to whomever they wish” They wish to give the water to the developers, despite the fact that it will leave a great many people without water in this already water-strapped area. Of course the people of Ontario have no legal or humanitarian right to water. The Water Source Protection Act does not protect homes on wells, but protects Township wells from rural people. Our water can be drained and we have no recourse under the law. Rural Ontario and our food producing farms are victims of progress!
Does the MOE actually care if the water vanishes from this area…? It mustn’t, as their actions show. The Ministry of Infrastructure has no control over the water, nor do they have control over the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Green Belt and the Niagara Escarpment.  Saying things like they want to achieve urban form that will support the achievement of economic and environmental benefits! These are lovely words, but just words ! This is unsustainable if they cannot bring the MOE to heel.
The head of the MOE’s London branch told me she knew very little about the Moraine and it’s legislation, but she was responsible for the water there. The water being like gold on the Moraine is not the MOE’s concern. She also said that the golf course had the right to the water because they are a business! Developers are businesses, but a working, food producing farms are not a business. These statements are even more disturbing since Stats Canada has just declared southern Ontario in a water crisis, as Dr. David Suzuki has been saying for years. The MOE is largely responsible for this state of affairs since they are the sole body that gives out permits to take water! So how is the Ministry of Infrastructure going to deal with the run away MOE?
And lastly and the most important thing the Ministry of Infrastructure doesn’t understand, is water! How much water is there in the County of Simcoe? No one knows! To calculate this would be a mammoth task and would cost a fortune, so the County, the Townships and the Province make guesstimates! Even the Oak Ridges Moraine has not been mapped for water , except in a small area along Yonge St in Richmond Hill. Our knowledge of how much water we have is lacking, yet there are obvious signs that something is wrong! Both Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay are at a historic low! When big bodies like this are being affected we have to ask why?
Simcoe County in its southern reaches is being systematically drained! In turn it affects all of the County. Slowly the loss of water will move north, and if the signposts are not there yet, they will be. Georgian Bay is a good red flag! Unfortunately, the Ministry of Infrastructure either has not the qualified staff to ferret out our water problems or they just sit in offices in Toronto and look at maps as to where growth should go!
If you look at a map, Bradford, Alliston, Barrie, Orillia, Midland, Penetanguishene and Collingwood look like obvious choices. They qualify when it comes to infrastructure, jobs, sewage, but only two don`t have water problems or won`t have water problems in the future. Collingwood and Penetanguishene could be the only reasonable choices. Both sit on Georgian Bay and derive their water from this source. Despite being at a historic low, it would take a catastrophe of a huge magnitude to render this source of water unattainable.
Alliston and all of New Tecumseth don’t have enough groundwater to supply their needs. A pipe to Collingwood and Georgian Bay was their only hope of keeping Honda and supplying their residents about a decade ago. The pipe has had to be extended to Beeton and Tottenham is hoping they will get water next. That is doubtful, when Collingwood resents sending water south, and they have no future plans for a bigger pump house or even sending water south. So New Tecumseth and Alliston in particular are on the horns of a dilemma. Do they share what water they have with the present residents in Tottenham or do they give it to new development in Alliston, while hoping Tottenham can survive on what they have and the expansion of 1,800 more homes? As it stands now, the people in Tottenham already resent being the have-not part of New Tecumseth. To deny them water, to satisfy developers, will not go over well, Places To Grow Act or not!
Bradford is also in need of water. So much so, that New Tecumseth thought in the beginning that they could sell them water to cover their costs. This was until someone pointed out that Bradford was in another watershed and it was illegal to transport water across watersheds. But even before that, Bradford`s wells were drawing down on the aquifers around there for 8 to 10 kilometres. More expansion would mean the need to find water other than ground water. They could run a pipe down to Lake Ontario at a horrendous cost, but will the MOE even grant them this privilege? Times are changing!
Barrie has reached its limits landwise and is looking to annex some off of Innisfil. Yet Barrie recently revealed that to supply the present population, they had resorted to a pipe into Lake Simcoe. Their groundwatersources were diminished to the point that this was necessary. How long will it take before Lake Simcoe shows signs of decline? Will Orillia follow suit with the same fate as Barrie? Will they dip their wick into Lake Simcoe to or have they already done so?
This is worrying! Four of the six Urban Nodes already have water problems or will do so soon, affecting larger bodies of water. But why are New Tecumseth, Alliston and Bradford having water problems when they either sit on the Oak Ridges Moraine or beside it?
In each case they actually possess very little of the Moraine in their Townships to draw from. Even Adjala-Tosorontio, that has more of the moraine, is in a water crisis in the Colgan region. Mismanagement of the Moraine by the MOE over the years has led to this problem. But, they cannot take all the blame. The Townships have allowed over-development, allowed golf courses to have free range and given water bottlers house room. There are at present 34 golf courses across the Oak Ridges Moraine. Simcoe County has 88 golf courses. We look upon them as lovely green spaces. I admit, that I once held this opinion. Your home was valued higher if it was near one. But times are changing and we are beginning to see what an environmental detriment they really are.
Golf Courses and their accompanying Club House slash, convention centre, slash wedding reception halls, are water-guzzling, polluting parasites. How did they go from lovely green spaces to this? Easy! People began to feel the effects of their presence and attitudes have changed towards pesticides.
The MOE views golf courses as businesses, that create jobs, despite the fact that they are often seasonal and pay their workers the industry standard of $8.00 an hour! So the MOE gives the average 18 hole golf course a permit to take the industry standard of 4.3 million litres a day to water grass for 180 to 190 days a year. These permits are for 5 to 10 years and lately courses have been asking for 10 year permits. What other waters does the MOE give them? A small club house as in the case of Woodington Lake Golf course situated between Tottenham and Colgan takes 1.44 million litres of water a day for 365 days a year. In their case they were also given a well to be used only in May, but it is used all year long. In addition the MOE gave them 10% of the flow of a tributary of the Beeton Creek that comes off  Natural Core Moraine in Adjala. Of course at times they have taken up to 100% of the flow, but on average it is 40 to 45%.  This is typical behaviour of golf courses.
One golf course in the Klienburg area has a truck they send out at night with long hoses and a pump. One end of that hose is dropped in the Humber River and the other in a pond they need filling. Then they say they are just irrigating from that pond. Of the golf courses on the Humber River that I could find information on a government site, the EBR, these golf courses took 41 million litres a day. This was on just one river and not all the golf courses on it! Another golf course in Peel was allowed to run a pipe 2 km. off their land to take water from a creek. The majority of the 498 golf courses in southern Ontario get water from, some form of above ground water source, whether it be creek, river or lake. The 88 golf courses in Simcoe are no different.
Now think of the 88 golf courses in Simcoe. What body of water are they on ? Do they have 18 holes or 36 or more? The larger the golf course, the larger the water take!  5.74 million litres a day will supply 36 holes. The Nottawasaga Inn  has 56 holes! And the MOE will tell you it is the industry standard!  Now we have golf associations dictating to the MOE just how much water a course should get and they are rolling over to comply. Even if the 88 golf courses were all 18 holes, they would be watering grass with 378.4 million litres a day. Multiply that over 180 days, and that equals 68,112 million litres. But these 88 golf courses are not just using that little. They have other methods!
Woodington’s method to gain more water was to route the Beeton tributary through all of their 5 deep, unlined ponds and 12-acre lake and claim that they are just irrigating from the run-off that is going into these ponds and lake. The rest of us are not allowed to create online ponds on a creek, but they do! Then there’s the problem that these ponds are unlined and as much as 30 feet deep, makes you question where else the water is coming from? The 2003 Simcoe County Water Report says that Adjala has the most, shallow, at-risk aquifers in all of Simcoe. Woodington is on the town line between New Tecumseth and Adjala. Sand point wells have been the norm in this area for over a 100 years, but not any more. The clay that lines the 12 acre lake, one pond that is 2 acres and another at least a quarter of a kilometre long and 3 regular ponds, the MOE insisted that the clay prevented water from the aquifers seeping in. The rest of us with that type of clay, once, could dig down 4 feet and have water leaking in, but not the golf course ! It’s magic clay!
The MOE seems to have a soft spot for golf courses despite the fact that they are a losing business. The 2003 Peel County report on golf courses has proven this. In 2002 they had a flood of requests to build golf courses. Why?  So before granting their requests to build, they surveyed their present courses. It takes a 70% turn over to make a profit. The vast majority of golf courses were running at 50%. Some were even less than that. Only a handful actually turned a profit.  Why the demand? It’s two-fold. First off the Conservative Government was tweaking the land evaluations, not for just homes, but golf courses too. They used a complicated bizarre formula of, number of days open, to cost of a round, to the number of people playing and other odd factors. It turned out that the vast majority would now pay the equivalent of roughly a single home’s taxes to the Townships. The Townships are not allowed to alter the tax, by law, so what they paid in 2003 is roughly the same as they did in 2010. The formula still stands. It can’t be changed! Then to add insult to injury, golf course owners of poor revenue courses can piggy back the failing businesses onto the back of a profitable one they own, to reduce their taxes. If they don’t own another business, they break up the Club House and golf course into two businesses to guess what! And it’s all legal.
We don’t need that number of golf courses, it is obvious. Aurora alone, within the city’s boarders, has 19 and is fighting to stop another from coming in. These 19 have corralled the water supply to the point that Aurora had to drop a pipe into Lake Ontario, 35 kilometres away to supply the residents’ needs. All this, while the golf courses get their water for free!
What do golf courses and development have to do with the Oak Ridges Moraine and northern Simcoe? The Moraine supplies water to 65 major creeks and rivers across its length. That means the Nottawasaga River, the Sheldon, Bailey, Keenansville, Beeton and Penville Creeks, and the Holland, Black and Pefferlaw Rivers, as well as indirectly the Innisfil and Cookstown Creeks, are fed water from the Moraine they spring from. They are all supplied by the Oak Ridges Moraine and flow into either Georgian Bay or Lake Simcoe. It is on these bodies of water where these parasitic golf courses lie, draining the water before it reaches its destination. Simcoe entirely lies in the Moraine’s watershed.
The closer in the golf courses are to the Moraine, the more damage they cause. Woodington Lake Golf Course has laid waste to the Colgan area on both sides of the Town Line. Since its start up in 1995 we have seen our wells drop like stones and our water supply has yet to rely on the rain and snow of the past decade, when there was reduced rain and snow and staggering heat. It takes 25 years for the rain of today to reach the aquifers here. We are now relying on the water accumulated in 1985. Unfortunately it is being used so fast that the diminished water supply will seem plentiful in the years to come. Then we will be in even worse dire striates than we are now! Less rain and snow means less well water ! It’s as simple as that!  What goes in must not be taken out in larger quantities! The MOE does not seem to understand this concept!
The Moraine is at a breaking point here and still the Township of Adjala wants to put in 856 homes, with an average of 2568 people, a 170 bed nursing home and a strip mall. On even less Moraine, Tottenham is to get 1,800 homes or an average of 5,400 people. Something will give, because the Moraine can no longer sustain the present residents with the existence of this golf course. It is severally affecting the water table. It has reduced the Bailey and Keenansville Creeks from 2 to 3 feet to 8 inches. Both these creeks are due west, almost 3 and 5 kilometres from Woodington, but they come off Natural Core Moraine. An area with the most held water. Ponds and feeder streams in this area had vanished by 2005. So have the fish and wildlife is reduced. The number of people having to drill deeper wells has not stopped since 2005. Reduced water and water pressure has become a way of life. So, what will happen if all these new people descend on an area that is hurting now, whether they are on one side of the Places To Grow Act or the other, date wise? The Ministry of Infrastructure is totally unaware of these factors and our Townships are not going to tell them? Build it first before they    come !
The Hockley Valley Resort perches on the top end of the Nottawasaga River at its source on Natural Core in Mono Township. You can bet that it is taking water year round for the golf course and the ski hills. This river is again reduced as the Innisfil Creek pours into it. The Innisfil Creek is down to a foot I was told, by someone that lives along its banks. No wonder when the Bailey and Keenansville Creeks are down to 8 inches as they flow into the Beeton Creek, who’s main tributary is being sucked dry by Woodington Lake. The water availability to boost the Nottawasaga River would be dismal. As they all dump into the Nottawasaga it has even less water to flow north. Two summers ago it was said in the paper that you could walk across the Nottawasaga in Alliston, in rubber boots without getting your feet wet! Now the less than mighty River has to navigate through more golf courses until what is left empties out into Georgian Bay. It’s a factor, why it is at a historic low. The rivers and creeks flowing into Lake Simcoe are battling the same thing.
The fact remains, if the MOE continues to support these golf courses, especially on the Oak Ridges Moraine, at the top end of our water supply, that part of the Moraine will die. The mature trees in this area are dying all over the place. We have lost over a dozen mature trees and there are several more that look like they won’t make it. We are a stones throw from Natural Core, in an environmentally protected area, with a creek. Can we water them to save them? No! We don’t have enough water ourselves. Even our friends and family don’t shower here if they stay for a couple of nights! They see the effects the golf course is having on us! So why is the MOE so reluctant, to rein in golf courses, knowing these facts? Who knows!
So if the south’s water supply collapses, it will have a domino effect all the way north. How long that will take I don’t know! But we do know that it took only 15 years for Woodington to put us in the predicament we’re in now! This type of development building and golf course construction is going on right across the 165 kilometre length of the Moraine. They sit cheek and jowl with it! The Ministry of Infrastructure does not have a clue about this and all the best laid plans of mice and men will not make the Places To Grow work if they don’t tackle the MOE, the OMB, the Townships, the County, and the problem of golf courses.
Sorry to ramble on so, but it is a complex issue. How we can resolve it, I don’t know, but it has to be done. In some ways I think that reining in golf courses and Townships would go a long way to solve some of the problems we face. If you know of someone who might benefit from these thoughts pass it along and encourage people to write the Ministry of Infrastructure. Every letter counts.
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