The Westhill Argument Continues To Go Nowhere.

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.