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January
1999 Newsletter
RAP
Warns of Financial Costs of Expressway
The
Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan (RAP) formally
responded to the draft scoping document for the federal
environmental assessment of the expressway. In her letter,
RAP Coordinator Louise Knox asked for inclusion of additional
goals of the harbour cleanup and consideration of alternative
locations. In her final paragraph, she also focused attention
on the financial impacts of the project. It reads in part:
"I
do not know the extent to which socio-economic considerations
are accorded importance in an environmental screening, and
so I am unsure as to whether the following point is relevant
from a purely regulatory perspective. The point is this:
if the use of capital to build the expressway translates
into the disappearance of capital for combined sewer overflow
tanks or other wastewater treatment infrastructure, then
the goals of the Hamilton Harbour RAP will not be achieved.
Loss or deferral of planned spending on wastewater infrastructure
will either reverse the progress made in Hamilton Harbour
or extend its recovery period over a time frame that will
go beyond the year 2020. If the community is in fact making
a choice between an expressway and improved wastewater treatment
infrastructure, then it should be aware that by choosing
the expressway, any losses that cannot be mitigated in the
valley will be compounded by environmental losses in the
Harbour as well."
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