Message from AWARE Simcoe’s Angus meeting: get involved

By Kate Harries AWARE Simcoe January 23 2012

ANGUS – We face a challenge.

We have reached the limits of what our planet and our environment can support if we continue with our old wasteful ways.

But with imagination and good planning, Simcoe Coounty residents can live well and preserve the agricultural land and natural spaces for which this area is celebrated. 

That was the message at an AWARE Simcoe meeting held January 21 at the Angus Recreation Centre.

Around 100 people heard panellists explore various aspects of the harm that can come from sprawl, including high taxes and escalating living costs, continuing damage to Lake Simcoe and acceleration of climate change.

And all urged citizen involvement as the antidote for what may seem like an inexorable force gobbling up the landscape.  

Bill French of Springwater summarized Amendment 1, the provincial government’s announcement January 19 of new legislation for growth in Simcoe County presentation. 

Among the issues French highlighted as problematic: 

-Not enough emphasis in directing growth to the seven primary settlement areas (Barrie, Orillia, Collingwood, Midland-Penetanguishene, Alliston, Bradford and Alcona).

-Confusing messaging on the population numbers – the total is set at 667,000 in 2031 but extra numbers can be allowed.

-No plan to establish Simcoe County’s carrying capacity for food production and in terms of environmental functions. “Nobody knows, because nobody’s really looking,” French said.

He stressed that residents can influence what happens in their back yard. “Get involved. Attend your council meetings. Talk to your politicians.”

Claire Malcomson, whose family has been in Innisfil for six generations, recounted the history of growth in Simcoe County. She’s been involved for several years, through Environmental Defence, where she is manager of water programs, and as president of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition.

“What happens at the local level is critically important,” she said. “We can’t save Lake Simcoe by simply relying on provincial policies.”

Water quality will continue to deteriorate if municipal councillors stick with the land use policies of the last 30 years.

 “I don’t care how good your sewage treatment plant is, paving the watershed is really going to hurt, and already does hurt water quality in Lake Simcoe.”

In the Lake Simcoe watershed, biodiversity of species and the resilience of the watershed are declining, she said.  Changes are being observed on the lake – longer ice-free periods in winter and changes in species distribution in the near-shore area.

Sprawl compounds the problems of climate change, hydrogeological changes and land fragmentation. “The protection of green space is vitally important to the health of Lake Simcoe.”

Malcolmson described the province’s attempts since 2006 to address sprawl, starting with Places to Grow, its award-winning plan for the Greater Golden Hoseshoe. The plan put the brakes to local councils’ plans that – had they gone ahead – would have resulted in a million people living in Simcoe County by 2031, not the province’s lower target of 667,000. The population (422,000 in 2006) has doubled in the last 25 years.

The Lake Simcoe Protection Plan was introduced in 2009, to great applause from the environmental community. “We whooped and hollered and celebrated and then two days later, we were crushed, because the Simcoe County Vision came out.” 

This new planning document was an improvement on Simcoe County’s permissive Official Plan, she said, but its population allocations were not adjusted to accord with the Lake Simcoe Protection Act.

 “It came as a blow to us because we had been asking that new growth be contained to existing approved settlement areas and that population allocations… be reduced to ensure water quality, that the growth slow while low-impact development techniques and technologies improved.”

(Population allocations remain unchanged in the most recent legislation, Amendment 1, announced last week. In fact there is flexibility to allow even more than 667,000 by 2031. The province has refused to approve Simcoe County’s Official Plan since 2008, but local officials now expect that to happen.)

 “We’re still extremely concerned that the impact of the growth plan would override the benefits of the Lake Simcoe Protection Act,” Malcolmson said. “This shallow lake doesn’t drain quickly, it’s not conducive to supporting all of this growth.”

A recent study found that growth in all draft and approved official plans in the county will add 18-25 per cent more phosphorus to the lake by 2031, she said, “while we’re supposed to be reducing phosphorus levels in the lake by about 40 per cent.”

The next panellist, John Stillich of the Sustainable Urban Development Association, kicked off with some sobering statistics. By 2051, the global population is projected to be 9 billion, having grown by 29 per cent. Ontario and the Greater Golden Horseshoe are expected to grow faster by 50 per cent, to 20 million, and Simcoe County faster still, by 76 per cent, to 850,000.

(Stillich later explained that slower growth in the GGH is because the Toronto is forecast to grow at a slower pace, bringing the overall figure down, while Simcoe County appears to have been assigned higher growth, perhaps an outcome of pressures for ‘leapfrogging’ the Greenbelt.)

As the planet urbanizes, climate change accelerates, Stillich said. 

. “They say the speed of change is going to be so fast that plant species are not going to be able to adapt fast enough – they are not going to be able to move north fast enough, so there’s going to incredible species die-off.”

At some point, he warned, “we will hit a tipping point – there’s going to be an unstoppable feedback loop.”

Energy issues go hand in hand with climate change. “We’ve been living a charmed life over the past 50 years – energy is abundant and it’s cheap. But that’s ending, particularly on the petroleum front.”

Simcoe County residents will be among the first to feel the pain when energy prices double and triple, particularly those in rural and suburban settings, which are the most wasteful and costly. 

Stillich said those who move here for the county’s “rural character,” which will become increasingly suburban as the population moves towards 667,000, “shrink back in horror” from the idea of smaller lots and intensification in order to guard against sprawl.

New development should offer options for single adults, the elderly and lower-income residents, and stress car-optional living, Stillich said. 

But instead the focus is on single family homes, located at a distance from job centres. “It’s very inefficient for public service delivery – more pipes, more roads… your taxes are going to be high and it’s going to take away from other services you may not be getting as a result.”

More compact environments can be really pleasant and family-friendly places, he said, citing a SUDA study that looked at how many people can be accommodated without getting into highrise living. The study found that a density of 135 jobs and residents per hectare can be achieved, in contrast to the province’s minimum density of 50 for greenfield development (on agricultural land). 

 “Take note of the older European towns,” he said. “In rural France, in rural Germany, you’ve got all this agricultural land and in the middle of that is this small town where everything is there – the butcher, the baker, you just walk around the corner, you get all the stuff you need. It’s very compact, it works.”

These are farming communities that are pleasant places.with ambience and character, he said. “You want to linger there. Why can’t we have that kind of stuff here?”

David Strachan of the Midhurst Ratepayers Association spoke of being at the receiving end of a sprawl tsunami that came as a complete surprise to residents who learned a few weeks ago that their village of 3.500 is to grow to 30,000.

The Midhurst Secondary Plan was suddenly approved by Simcoe County in October, 2011. The province has appealed the plan to the Ontario Municipal Board.

 “It’s pretty significant because the powers that be want to turn a small village into a city the same size as Orillia… at the flick of a switch.”

Traffic impact will be dramatic as country roads are turned into four-lane highways to carry residents through town and out, for work, shopping and services – because Midhurst falls very short of the “complete community” that the province says it wants to see in a greenfield development.

“It’s so ridiculous that people say, how the hell did you get to that stage?” Strachan said.

To answer the question of why so many Midhurst residents were unaware of what was in the works, Strachan drew on information obtained from the township, which held an information meeting November 14, two weeks after the expiry date of the OMB appeal period.

The first intimation was on June 2 2008, when the township secondary plan committee put a notice of study commencement in the Barrie Advance – not in the Midhurst newsletter, and not in the Springwater News. Comments were due June 28.

The minutes of the committee’s meeting state: “It was determined that a population forecast will not be mentioned in the notice.”

On August 14, a notice of a public information centre to be held August 28, 2008 was published, again only in the Advance. 

Fifty four people attended, many of them developers and consultants, according to the committee’s minutes.

Another information session was held September 8. The timing of the two public meetings, just before and after the beginning of the school year, was not conducive to widespread awareness of the township’s plans, Strachan said. 

On November 3, 2008, the Midhurst Secondary Plan was adopted by Springwater Council and forwarded to Simcoe County, which withheld approval for three years.

“We’re going to do our best to stop it,” Strachan said, noting that the Midhurst plan fails to satisfy the “complete community” and the jobs-to-residents ratio requirements for greenfield development..

He expressed disappointment at the lack of engagement with the community by Springwater council.

“In an ideal democratic world, your elected politicians would be conversing at least with the residents and making sure that they had some kind of say about what’s going on in the place where they live,” he said. 

“We all know about the Midhurst Landowners Group – probably the residents have a much bigger investment in Midhurst than they do.”

Among those who participated in the discussion after the panel presentations were Clearview Councillor Thom Patterson, Sandra Trainor of Simcoe County Farm Fresh and Peter Stubbins, former deputy mayor of Tiny. A number of other elected officials attended, including Essa Mayor Terry Dowdall and Bradford West Gwillimbury Deputy Mayor Rob Keffer.