Region’s Plan to Expand Merritt Road in Welland, Pelham and Thorold Area Could Spell Doom for Any and All Provincially Significant Wetlands That Happen to Be in the Way
A News Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted May 10th, 2024 on Niagara At Large
Signs like this were often seen at public rallies in Niagara over the past decade where citizens called on our politicial leaders to save what is left of our natural places.
Should we be playing Mother Nature with wetlands that have been evolving here, nourishing wildlife, buffering their surroundings from flooding and serving as natural purifying systems for our water for countless thousands of years?
Should we try replacing these age-old wetlands with new ones we try constructing to make way for more roads and urban sprawl?
There are at least some urban planners and developers who still believe we should and the term they have often used for this idea of creating one wetland to make up for bulldozing over another is “biodiversity offsetting.”
I’m sure that at t least some residents across the Niagara region remember the term biodiversity offsetting going back eight or nine years when a Chinese government-based corporation called GR (CAN) Investment Ltd. proposed using it to replace provincially significant wetlands in Thundering Waters Forest in Niagara Falls to make way for urban development there.
A look at one of many provincially significant wetlands in Thundering Waters Forest – an area now targetted for development by a China-based corporation. File photo by Lori Monroe
That scheme, which received the blessing of a majority sitting on the board of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) at the time, was met with a good deal of public opposition.
In 2016 and for at least the next few years that followed, citizens in Niagara Falls and from across the region packed NPCA board meetings and meetings hosted by the City of Niagara Falls and GR representatives to say hogwash to all efforts to convince them that biodiversity offsetting could somehow compensate for the destruction of the rich, natural wetlands in Thundering Waters Forest.
One former Niagara Regional Councillor and Conservation Authority board member at the time actually turned up on a Hamilton CHCH TV news broadcast insisting that you could replicate an age-old wetland in another location in as little as five years. He might just as well have been trying to convince people that there really are flying monkeys and frogs that turn into princes.
Since then, we have heard very few, if anything, about biodiversity offsetting in our region. It’s as if municipal planners and developers know that in Niagara at least, any open discussion of using it in plans to construct new roads or buildings could be radioactive.
At a recent meeting of Niagara Region’s public works committee, St. Catharines Regional Councillor raised concerns about the fate of wetlands in an area where the Region is planning to expand Merritt Road.
That is until this past May 7th at a meeting of the Region’s Public Works Committee when in the wake of growing public concerns over the possible loss of provincially significant wetlands if and when the Region follows through on plans to expand Merritt Road in the Welland, Thorold, Pelham area, St. Catharines Regional Councillor Haley Bateman asked Frank Tassone, a transportation services director for the Region, the following question –
“My concern is that this project is in contrast to climate emergency and I know you have heard this before but once we take out the ecosystem then all those things that are destroyed by this construction we don’t them get back. So what is the plan to mitigate the impact on the environment?”
Tassone then said; “We haven’t got into detailed design yet but what I can say is that in previous projects were we have impacted wetlands, we have been required to either restore those wetlands in other areas either on regional land or other stakeholders’ properties who are willing to have that reinstatement happen on their properties. Or most recently the Conservation Authority has accepted payment in lieu of re-establishment. That way they can re-establish in other areas on behalf of folks that do disrupt areas that are naturally habitated (the director’s word, not mine). So we will be working with the Conservation Authority through the process as we move through the detailed design to determine whether there are areas where that habitat can be located or what other measures can be taken to offset that.”
“I don’t mean to be confrontational,” responded Bateman, “and I respect Director Tassone and I know that he knows his stuff but I don’t necessarily think you can move the ecosystem or create them in another place (and) I am really surprised that the Conservation Authority (would consider) taking that approach.”
Notice in this exchange between Bateman and Tassone how the director seemed to dance around using the term biodiversity offsetting. He used the words like ‘recover’ and ‘re-establishment’, and came very close with the word ‘offset’.
But biodiversity offsetting by any other name is still biodiversity offsetting and here we are, eight years after the public outcry over using it to blow away the wetlands in Thundering Waters Forest, with a plan to possibly use it to expand Merritt Road.
Just a few more years after Niagara’s Regional Council declared a climate emergency- a declaration at least some of us hoped the the Region, through real change from business as usual, would take seriously – how may more wetlands, woodlots and other natural spaces are our municipal leaders prepared to see destroyed forever for more urban sprawl?
Niagara At Large will continue following where the Regional Council goes with this Merritt Road expansion plan, and for the sake of protecting and preserving what is left of our natural heritage in this region, so should you.
We need to let our elected representatives know that when it comes to paving over any more of these precious places, enough is enough!
Please watch the following great video put together on the “myth of biodiversity offsetting” by Niagara resident and naturalist Owen Bjorgan and few years back during the heat of the Thundering Waters Forest battle. Watch it by clicking on the screen directly below –
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Niagara At Large 
We all new the idea of Biodiversity offsetting was not forgotten………. I just can’t figure out what took them so long.
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We’ve been through this dance before, led by Bruce Timms, among others. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. We’re so lucky to have Doug Draper who remembers the nonsense we had to endure in the past and warns us against repeating it. You’d think by now some councillors would have learned a thing or two about how ecosystems work, large ones and small ones, and how human engineering, however convinced of its own superiority, can never be as intelligent as the natural world. Look at where we are today — at the wildfires already engulfing towns in Western Canada although it’s not yet mid-May — and ask yourself if we, as a species, really know what we’re doing. I say we don’t. The ancient Greeks knew and feared hubris. That’s what we are suffering from…
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It is so unbelievable the power politicians have in destroying all of our world. They are not in office that long but long enough to destroy for today and all of the tomorrows. They have no regard for what they will be killing and obvious they care less. The mystery is how does one sleep at night knowing that day they gave the okay to pave over what God blessed all of us with.
I believe one day all that took part in destroying His creation will answer for it.
Thank you for reporting on this and saying you will continue.
Faye Suthons Wainfleet
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