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March
2003 Newsletter
The
Decisive Year
It appears that 2003 will be the year Hamilton finally decides
to build or not build the Red Hill expressway. The 2003
budget allocates $19.6 million for work this year, but this
apparently does not including cutting of trees in the valley
prior to the municipal elections on November 10.
The main task of friends of the valley is to change some
faces on City Council, and the conditions appear to be ripe
to do this. Exploding watermains and an intense budget crisis
have clearly shown that the expressway is unaffordable.
A falling credit rating, rising taxes, increased user fees
and sharply deteriorating services all point to the necessity
for a new vision for Hamilton. They also prove that pro-expressway
councillors are unwilling to open their eyes and therefore
must be replaced.
The 2003 expressway workplan includes building a new railway
bridge for the CNR, two bridges for the planned Mud Street
interchange, and a bridge for the Greenhill interchange.
Work is also planned to relocate the intersection of Brampton
Street and Nash Road to make way for the expressway connection
to the QEW. If these plans proceed they will waste a lot
of money but the damage to the valley ecosystems will be
limited.
However, the City has not obtained any new permits in the
past year, despite claims last March that these would all
be finalized by the fall of 2002. City submissions to the
federal fisheries department last July have not yet produced
the required permit under the Fisheries Act. The City has
not obtained any permits or approvals to open up the Rennie
Street dump to accommodate the expressway or other related
work. Recently the Niagara Escarpment Commission made clear
again to the City that a development permit is required
for expressway and stream relocation work, and that this
must be obtained before other provincial permits can be
issued.
Most of the archaeological work remains uncompleted. It
must be carried out prior to actual road construction. Work
scheduled to start in April of last year was stopped by
the Iroquois Confederacy. From September to November some
archaeological work was carried out near Rosedale Arena
in an area where the City plans to relocate Red Hill Creek.
More work is still required at this site and no work has
been re-started at the major site directly in the path of
the expressway.
The reports related to the provincial exemption order have
not been released. They were promised for the fall, then
for "early in the new year", then the "first
quarter of 2003" and most recently "in April".
It is illegal for the City to proceed with the project prior
to completing the exemption order process, and it is far
from finished.
The Conservation Authority has raised new concerns about
the ability of the road to withstand major storms. It has
warned that under current plans "infrastructure will
be at risk of damage and there will be safety concerns".
Upgrading the road to the standard advocated by the Authority
would greatly increase its cost and might make it impossible
to build at all.
Both the provincial and municipal elections offer opportunities
to fight the expressway. It is crucial that friends of the
valley actively support anti-expressway candidates in both
elections in every way they can. The battle for the valley
will be won or lost this year!
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