Almost two years have passed. Legal consultations galore and a neighbour and opponent to the Westhill Development is still not fully informed.
Four failures to obtain approval for a Consolidated Board Hearing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later and still there is no clear understanding .
Property- owners dependent on private wells always have reason for concern . Supply can never be taken for granted. A dry summer can affect a well. . Drilling for a new supply may need repeated efforts to find potable water. Being high on a hill can aggravate the problem.
Residents have every right to demand absolute assurance, whatever is proposed on neighbouring land will not impact their water supply.
But challenging the right to develop is a lost cause.
In a letter to the editor this week, the Westhill neighbour makes several comments unsupported by facts. It's not surprising.
Councillor MacEachern repeatedly claims the town's water supply is limited. Mayor Morris lets the councillor do all the talking in public. People hear it. Don't question it. It plays to their fears
Heat wave water restrictions get linked to a shortage of water.
They are not. We now even have access to Lake Ontario water.
Restrictions are linked to water storage capacity.
For ten months of the year, twelve in a wet summer, we have more than adequate storage.
In a heat wave, when too many people use copious amounts of clean, pure, expensively treated water, to keep grass growing and green when nature dictates it should be brown and dormant; when they wash their most treasured possession in the driveway and drop the hose to let the water run off to the storm sewer in the road; we have water restrictions.
We do not , nor should we ever need to build sufficient water storage for extravagant, irresponsible, wanton waste of a precious resource during a heat wave.
But that's all about the municipal water supply.
Country dwellers dependent on their own well need no advice from townies about the need to conserve water.
The Westhill neighbour's understanding of a land use designation is also not fully informed.
However much one might wish it to be so, land with legal designation for development did not lose that right with passage of the Oak Ridges Moraine Act or the turn of the century.
The Oak Ridges Moraine Act includes development designations. Only the nature of the development is changed. Lands which did not have a designation prior to passage of the Act, don't have it now and will unlikely get it in the foreseeable future.
The Province did not choose, as they did in Richmond Hill, to buy designated land in Aurora to remove it from the market.. How much they spent to acquire land with services already in the ground , no doubt contributed to the current deficit requiring higher taxes for all of us.
In March 2008, in preparation for a Municipal Board Hearing into the town's failure to make a decision,Aurora's staff recommended approval in principle of the Westhill development, subject to outstanding matters being satisfactorily resolved.
It was not "natural" as the resident states in her letter, for the Town to oppose the developer's appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board.
It was not even sensible.Especially in the face of the Region's pass , Environment's Ministry's certification and the Toronto Conservation Authority's favourable comments on the proposal.
Whatever influence the town has to ensure concerns are addressed at a Board hearing, rests in our power to persuade the Board they are valid and not purely politically motivated.
Appealing an O.M.B. decision twice , and then thrice to a Divisional Court at collective cost of a million dollars is not persuasive.
An argument based on an Act which had not been proclaimed, is hardly conducive to convince the Board of the strength of our arguments. Only hard evidence will accomplish that.
The Ontario Municipal Board is charged with making the decision. Repeated failure to change that fact has produced nothing but delay of the inevitable hearing.
Meanwhile, the real argument has yet to commence.
If the water supply is in question, the same cannot be said for financial resources, public and private, being spread about the land without as much as an organic advantage.
Chris Watt's blog gets into the subject. While I enjoy reading his blog - he does have a sense of humour and he could stand to spell check it once in a while - he has some inaccurate information.
ReplyDeleteHe states that Aurora buys water from Newmarket and other communities. Correct me if I am wrong, and I know you will Evelyn, but while water is a Town service, the supply is regional.
He also says Aurora was water rich. If memory serves, Aurora has always had water issues - that's what happens with a well-based system.
I do agree with him about waste of water vs. demand. This Town has for years allowed growth with little increase of infrastructure.
While waste is an issue, people will not unlearn that habit unless there are consequences. Rather than silly bylaws about when you can use water, simply charge a premium rate based on the demand. In high demand times, it costs more. When people see that their hard earned dollars are being used to fund their waste, they may think a second about leaving the hose on.
Your statement that we should not build infrastructure to support the high demand. I think that is a cop-out. Let's build an infrastructure to support the residents of today and tomorrow without fear of shortages.
And by the way, build the golf course too. Modern golf courses don't use as much water as you think.
I guess I will defend my blog post here seeing as anonymous didn't bother to comment on it my blog.
ReplyDeleteNo matter.
I do not believe that my post includes inaccurate information, so I will expand on it here. I will most likely inject some spelling mistakes, most of which are just for fun.
You are correct, the town is supplied by the region, not Newmarket directly. However if you trace back where the water comes from you will most likely find it originating in Newmarket. Water not from York Region comes from Peel Region and Toronto.
In 2002 and 2008, York Region began supplementing the groundwater supply in Aurora with water from the City of Toronto and the Region of Peel. This decreases the demand on the underground aquifer and provides additional security by having a second source of supply.
You can read a 2008 report here:
http://www.town.aurora.on.ca/app/wa/doc?docId=8234
There is a section titled:
Who Looks After the Water Supply?
York Region is responsible for water supply, production, treatment, storage and trunk distribution.
The make up of Aurora’s water supply is a blended combination of ground water and surface water. In regards to the ground water, York Region operates six production wells (Numbered 1 through 6) in the Town of Aurora which range in depth from 98 to 104 meters. The majority of the ground water supply is provided through wells number 1 through 4, located at the well field and treatment facility on Water Wells Lane, near Aurora Heights Blvd. and Yonge St. The aquifer from which the Aurora wells draw is part of an extensive aquifer (known as the Yonge Street Aquifer) which also makes up part of the current water source for the Town of Newmarket and parts
of the Town of East Gwillimbury. The Aurora wells produce approximately 5.4 million m³ of water per year
In the spring of 2008, the Region of York had
completed the new Peel feed supply which runs north up Bathurst St. This supply is connected to the Town’s distribution system at a number of interconnecting points along Wellington St., and then terminates in the NW Orchard Heights Blvd. reservoir.
At this point (June 2008), the operational mixing ratio has not yet been finalized, the Region of York, however, anticipates that the Toronto and Peel supply portion will be increasing over time as demand dictate
Demand is dictating more water, we just have no more to draw from.
As for Aurora always having water issues, that is not necessarily true. Perhaps Anonymous didn't go back far enough.
I pulled out an old postcard showing a massive water reservoir, on it it read:
50,000 gallons supplied by water from 2 Artesian Wells 280 ft deep, giving flow of 325,000 gallons per day.
That's impressive even by today's standards and the photo dates this as over 75 years old.
Was the population smaller, of course.
Was it serviced without water bans, most likely yes.
I don't know for sure as I wasn't around, I wasn't even born twice over.
Regardless it seems to me that there was infrastructure in place to accomodate citizens.
Sadly somewhere along the way development outsripped infrastructure and it is set to do it again as we intensify.
If Westhill wants to build a golf course, so be it. provided they can surpass several environmental checks (that some may see as obstacles or hurdles). Perhaps they should be required to provide a significant amount of $ for water infrastructure upgrades to accommodate their 75 homes, and no doubt the 200-330+ homes that will be developed on the golf course down the road.
A golf course is often the first step for further development, regardless of what hokey "can't build here" clauses are written by the government of the day.
Grandfather this in and the grandchildren will have to pay the price.
Which in this case may be a shortage of clean, local water.