The Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority’s Strategic Plan Fiasco

A Commentary by John Bacher 

The Strategic Plan exercise of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority is scheduled to end with two significant dates. This is a December 6^6h deadline for public comments to be followed by a decision of the NPCA board of directors on December 18^th. It is scheduled to be held in the boardroom of the NPCA on the top floor of 250 Thorold Road at 7 pm.

The St. John’s Conservation Area in the Niagara community of Thorold, Ontario, one of the conservation areas the Niagara Peninsula Conservatino Authority may ‘dispose’ of under its soon-to-be-approved ‘Strategic Plan’ for the future. Photo by Mike Dickman

It is always important for citizens to take part in decisions of government agencies that have an impact on the environment. However, this consultation has some unique and disturbing features.  Rather than tweaking a fundamentally flawed strategic plan, the basic process, driven by characters such as  lawyers for developers Victor Muratori and Edward Lustig, both who served on committees that helped churn out the report, needs to be abandoned.  This needs to be clearly spelled out in submissions in the  weeks ahead.

Given the nature of the committees involved in important matters such as property and development regulation, the horrific conclusions of the Strategic Plan such as the idea of “disposal” of existing conservation areas and the need for the NPCA to become more “customer friendly”, are not surprising.  Such assumptions cannot be corrected by improvements, but only by the scrapping of the process.

Why there is no need for a Strategic Plan is that the basic framework which should be guiding the NPCA, apart from its legal requirements under the Conservation Authorities Act, is that the mission which is to be sought was much better established by the Niagara Region’s Water Quality Protection Strategy. Like the NPCA’s  Strategic Plan, this process required those who took part to engage in voluminous reading and meetings.  However, the people were not just those who were consultants and lawyers for developers. A lot of environmentally literate  citizens with serious concerns for the environment took part.

One excellent recommendation by the Niagara Region’s water strategy was that the NPCA be required to conduct ecological restoration strategies for watersheds which it defined. These are now approximately half completed, with many in draft stages. Progress on completing them was essentially frozen by the Strategic Plan process disastrously unleashed two years ago. 

A  major issue in a shelved study for the Ten Mile. Beaverdams and Shriners Creek was the proposed urban boundary expansion for the City of Niagara Falls. While a watershed  plan has no legal authority in deciding urban boundary expansions, the public discussions  recognized that the issue would have a major impact on studied watersheds.  The lawyer supporting this expansion, Ed Lustig, and a consultant for the development consortium, the North West Niagara Falls Landowners Group,  Lisa Campbell, were both  involved in the Strategic Plan panels.

The most disturbing aspect of the Strategic Plan is its call for the “disposal” of now protected areas that are owned by the NPCA. The ecological significance of these lands are disputed.  They can be better appreciated however, if they are seen as part of a core network of mature forest areas, which are part of a larger natural heritage system. 

The now shelved watershed plans can be revived in the wake of the death of the proposed Strategic Plan. Their assumptions are those that actually form the key part of the mandate of conservation authorities. This is that in the interest of water protection, forest cover in Ontario should be greatly expanded.

John Bacher is a veteran conservationist in Niagara, Ontario and a long-time member of the citizen group, Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society. 

As  John Bacher and others know, this NAL publisher Doug Draper agreed last year to participate voluntarility on a committee involved enhancing communications programs for the NPCA for this Strategic Plan. Doug Draper  will share his own concerns around this Plan with NAL readers later.

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