Ontario’s Greenbelt Protection Area Under Threat

The green area highlights the Greenbelt stretching from the Niagara River in Niagara, Ontario around Lake Ontario east of the Greater Toronto Area

News from the Hamilton, Ontario-based group Citizens at City Hall (CATCH)

(Niagara At Large is posting this in part because there are also individuals and groups in Niagara who would like to roll back or dismantle restrictions on building on good growing land inside the Greenbelt zone here.)

Many owners of rural lands want their properties removed from the Greenbelt that was established by the province ten years ago to preserve agricultural lands and natural areas treasured by many urban residents. But urban supporters led by Environment Hamilton may be drowned out or left out in the city’s formal public consultation on the Greenbelt which is taking place exclusively in rural areas not accessible by transit.

The first “Open House Drop-In Session” will take place on September 10 at the Ancaster Fair Grounds. Two more follow at Harry Howell Arena on Highway 5 east of Clappison’s Corners on September 14 and at Winona Vine Estates on Glover Road in rural Stoney Creek on September 17.

Each session will run from 6 to 8 pm starting with an “orientation session” after which “the public is invited to review a series of display panels that will identify potential areas for addition or removal from the Greenbelt Plan … selected on the basis of a series of criteria which will also be on display.”

Neither the potential changes to protected lands nor the criteria being used by city staff have been revealed, but the entire process appears to have accelerated since councillors were told about it earlier this summer. At the June 24 city council meeting planning director Steve Robichaud said staff would “develop the criteria over the summer … and then have consultation with the stakeholders and the general public on those criteria” in late summer or early fall.

“Then we will follow up with consultation with the general public and/or landowners as we apply those criteria,” stated Robichaud about the identification of “areas that should be removed from the Greenbelt Plan in order to accommodate the projected growth.” Both these steps now appear to be combined in the rural-only meetings scheduled for this month.

When it was established in 2005, large rural areas were left in a “white belt” between the Greenbelt and the edge of existing urban boundaries. A recent study found growth by municipal governments to 2031 can be accommodated with just 17 percent of this white belt leaving no need for any Greenbelt lands.

The aerotropolis, Hamilton’s biggest ever urban boundary expansion, consumed about a tenth of the city’s 6700 hectare white belt. But some argue that all the rest should also be urbanized despite being almost entirely prime agricultural land, and many also want Greenbelt lands released for development – with at least some of that pressure supported by the city’s planning department.

One ten-acre removal backed by staff won unanimous approval from councillors on the planning committee in June before the decision was put in abeyance because of objections from Brenda Johnson that it was jumping the queue. She said she’d been assured by staff that no decisions would be made at that June meeting which she wasn’t able to attend, and argued that there were many more landowners “trying to come to the feeding trough” in her rural Stoney Creek and Glanbrook ward.

“Hundreds of property owners want their property out [of the Greenbelt],” she said. “Some want back in but most of them want out, so this place would be full.”

Judi Partridge supported Johnson’s effort to refer the decision back to the planning committee. She noted that most of her ward is in the protected area “and there are people who want out of the Greenbelt so this process has to be followed fairly and allowed for everyone to be able to come forward.”

The ten acre property is at Fifty Road and Barton Street in Winona and was once included in the city’s Stoney Creek Urban Boundary Expansion (SCUBE) but an Ontario Municipal Board appeal by the province and a subsequent designation of the property has included it in the Greenbelt. The owners – 1800615 Ontario Inc (Sergio Manchia and Anthony DiCenzo) – want to use the lands for residential development.

Before the first phase of the provincial review of the Greenbelt Plan concluded at the end of May, Environment Hamilton helped about eighty people make submissions and numerous others attended the provincial public meeting in April.  The city supplemented that consultation with four of its own meetings – three of those in the rural area. The province expects the second phase to begin in the winter of 2016.

Down the road in Brant County, a coalition of environmental and agricultural groups want a greenbelt established along the Grand River all the way to Lake Erie to protect farmland and natural features of the watershed. Sustainable Brant points to statistics that Ontario is losing 350 acres a day of prime agricultural land.

CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at hamiltoncatch.org . You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to http://hamiltoncatch.org/newsletter/?p=subscribe. Sharing links are available on the hamiltoncatch.org.You can unsubscribe at http://hamiltoncatch.org/newsletter/?p=unsubscribe

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