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July
12, 2003
IT IS ABSURD TO CLAIM THAT NO NEW PERMIT IS REQUIRED FROM
THE NIAGARA ESCARPMENT COMMISSION FOR THE RED HILL CREEK
EXPRESSWAY
The
July 9 Spectator headline declared: “Escarpment Commission
gives go to Red Hill”. This is false and misleading
and doesn’t even correspond to the content of the Spectator
story which reports that the Niagara Escarpment Commission
(NEC) did not make a decision at its June meeting, but rather
tabled the letter that had asked the Commission to issue
a stop work order if the City of Hamilton begins expressway
construction. Far from “giving a go”, the Commission
asked its staff to write to the City to obtain clarification
on their plans and positions related to the escarpment lands.
The
legislation governing the NEC requires it to “provide
for the maintenance of the Niagara Escarpment and land in
its vicinity substantially as a continuous natural environment,
and to ensure only such development occurs as is compatible
with that natural environment”. This includes “(a)
to protect unique ecologic and historic areas” and
“(b) to maintain and enhance the quality and character
of natural streams and water supplies”.
The NEC became involved in the expressway project in 1978
and continuously opposed its location in the Red Hill Creek
Valley, advocating instead that the roadway follow Highway
20. In April 1984, Hamilton-Wentworth applied for a development
permit for the expressway. NEC staff recommended that it
be refused and this was clearly the view of the Commission,
but it’s power to make a decision was superceded by
the establishment of a Consolidated Joint Board. Nevertheless,
the Commission voted that “The NEC is not in agreement
with the proposed Red Hill Creek Expressway at this location
since it is in conflict with the purpose and objectives
of the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act and
the policies of the final proposed Plan.”
The
NEC was not represented on the Joint Board. Instead two
members of the Ontario Municipal Board out-voted a single
representative of the Environmental Assessment Board and
approved the expressway. The Board also ordered the NEC
to provide a permit and declared that “there will be
no adverse impact on the Niagara Escarpment” and that
the road would be built “without creating an additional
opening through the escarpment.”
Today
the City plans to cut an 80 metre wide and 12 metre deep
hole in the face of the escarpment – the single largest
cut in Ontario history. Other major changes to the project
within NEC lands include construction of a 220 metre viaduct,
several stormwater ponds and a complete redesign of the
Greenhill Avenue interchange. The City also plans to re-locate
Red Hill Creek from the foot of the escarpment to the QEW,
a scheme not even contemplated in 1985.
Of
course, we also now have far more knowledge about the escarpment
lands and the flora and fauna that inhabit them. Investigations
since 1985 have uncovered more than 30 archaeological sites,
mostly within the NEC lands. These include an 11,000 year
old site that is the first evidence of humans in the Hamilton
area, and a native village whose partial excavation has
generated over 56,000 artifacts. And the City has also admitted
that there will be “high-level impacts will occur throughout
the entire Red Hill Creek valley system including the re-entrant
section into the Niagara Escarpment”.
Thus
it is absurd and outrageous for the City to claim that a
1980s permit is sufficient. They claim that all of the above
changes to NEC lands are not the business of the NEC –
that no permit is needed to blast the largest ever hole
in the escarpment; that no review is required of the relocation
of Red Hill Creek; that the most extensive archaeological
treasures in Hamilton can be bulldozed without review; that
the effects on the nationally vulnerable Southern Flying
Squirrel and many other rare species on NEC lands can be
trashed without NEC oversight.
Both
the Commission and the staff of the NEC have repeatedly
stated that a new permit is required, and the Commission
has never voted to rescind this position. However, today’s
NEC is a mere shadow of what it once was. The Harris-Eves
government has slashed nearly half the NEC’s staff
and appointed a number of individuals to the Commission
who have called for its abolition and who have economic
interests in the exploitation of the escarpment. In the
past few years, the Commission has approved more than one
third of the development applications that openly violate
the NEC legislation. And despite many violations of the
escarpment legislation, it has carried out no prosecutions
for several years.
The
City of Hamilton is counting on this drastically weakened
NEC to keep its head down, ignore its past rulings and meekly
forget about protecting the escarpment near Red Hill Valley.
The NEC staff person who is orchestrating this surrender
told Friends of Red Hill that the Commission can’t
afford to fight a lawsuit that the City of Hamilton will
certainly launch if the NEC gets in its way. After all,
the City spent $4.5 million to stop a federal environmental
assessment of the expressway.
None
of this changes the fact that the NEC has told the City
that it must apply for a new permit, and that any construction
activity by the City at Greenhill Avenue or in other NEC
lands is illegal and makes a complete mockery of the laws
established to protect the escarpment.
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