BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is an open letter from Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition executive director Claire Malcolmson to Barrie Mayor Alex Nuutall and members of city council in reference to 'Rally planned to make waves over sports field at Barrie waterfront,' published May 22.
Dear Mayor Alex Nuttall and Barrie council members;
It has come to our attention that Barrie has approved, in principle, the destruction of an ecologically important shoreline forested area for a turf soccer field for the Cadets.
We support the comments of Nature Barrie and Engage Barrie, regarding the lack of public consultation and lack of imagination about where else the Cadet activity takes place.
Council must do better. When we plan for youth, are we not thinking about their future and climate change? Why in the world would you take down a much-loved, ecologically important features of the city’s best attribute, its waterfront trail?
As noted, there are many other options for soccer field use that do not actually harm youths’ future environment.
When you say you are a bird-friendly city, you do not elect to remove their habitat without serious consideration of alternatives, which has not happened.
If you are a pollinator-friendly city, you don’t do this. If, as Mayor Nuttall said personally, he would choose Lake Simcoe’s health over development, you don’t make this choice. We need you to see the inconsistency of what you are saying and doing.
Death by a thousand cuts like this is killing Lake Simcoe. Barrie has done so well in the last two decades – please, think, act appropriately and don’t wreck Barrie’s best feature.
We see that the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) has commented; let me share what we see between the lines. You are aware, conservation authorities' powers have been curtailed, and they no longer comment on pollution or protection if it is not related to erosion and natural hazards. You will observe they made very few comments, but that is because they are handcuffed.
Please do consider the plastic pollution, and the loss of pervious surface impacts on Lake Simcoe.
We checked for conformity with the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan (LSPP). This is the relevant policy:
6.32-DP: Policies 6.32-6.34 apply to existing settlement areas and areas of Lake Simcoe adjacent to these lands, including the littoral zone, and these areas are not subject to policies 6.1-6.3, 6.5, 6.11 and policies 6.20-6.29.
6.33-DP: An application for development or site alteration shall, where applicable:
a) increase or improve fish habitat in streams, lakes and wetlands, and any adjacent riparian areas;
b) include landscaping and habitat restoration that increase the ability of native plants and animals to use valleylands or riparian areas as wildlife habitat and movement corridors;
c) seek to avoid, minimize and/or mitigate impacts associated with the quality and quantity of urban run-off into receiving streams, lakes and wetlands; and
d) establish or increase the extent and width of a vegetation protection zone adjacent to Lake Simcoe to a minimum of 30 metres where feasible.
6.34-DP: Where, through an application for development or site alteration, a buffer is required to be established as a result of the application of the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS), the buffer shall be composed of and maintained as natural self-sustaining vegetation.
6.35-DP: For greater certainty, where lands have been incorporated into a settlement area after the effective date of the plan, an application for development or site alteration within those lands are subject to the policies in this chapter other than policies 6.32 to 6.34.
We believe that the above requirements of the LSPP have not been met and we ask that you compare your proposal to these policies in a staff report.
Respectfully, we would like Barrie council to find an alternative location for the Cadet activity, and to please protect the mature forests you have in aid of reaching the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan’s target of 40 per cent high-quality natural cover in the Lake Simcoe watershed.
Claire Malcolmson
Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, executive director
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