Leave to Appeal Permit requested to protect Leitrim Wetland
Sun, 2008-03-16 10:08 — ED
On Tuesday, March 11, the Greenspace Alliance and the Sierra Club filed for Leave to Appeal a Permit to take Water issued by the Ministry of Environment on February 22.
The permit would allow withdrawal of up to 17 million litres per day until September 30, 2008, in order to allow laying of water and sewer mains in Phase 2 of the Findlay Creek Village development.
A summary of the filing is on the EBR web site.
The Decision (to issue the Permit) was posted on February 26.
See below for updates.
Erwin
16 March 2008
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Appeal of "last" short-term Permit abandoned
On October 14, 2008, it was decided to abandon our appeal of the latest, and supposedly last, short-term permit to pump water at Leitrim Wetland.
The Permit was valid until September 30 and the Ministry has given strong indication that no extension or further short-term permit will be issued.
Another short-term Permit, which came to light only recently, is for surface water diversion (up to 32.4 million liters/day) and remains in effect until November 30, 2008.
It is recognized and acknowledged that, should the Ministry issue a 10-year Permit (which would cover both pumping and surface water diversion), the Greenspace Alliance and the Sierra Club are likely to seek leave to appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal.
While this was now the prudent decision to take, it should be noted that the developer has succeeded in delaying our application for Leave to Appeal by raising questions about the admissability of the appeal and the qualification of one of our experts and also alleging that there had been trespass. As the comment below notes, these were all unsuccessfull. The latest motion was then for declaring the application moot. Neither the Ministry nor the developer had yet filed papers with the Tribunal in reply to our Application for Leave to Appeal.
Erwin Dreessen
19 October 2008
Developer fails to derail appeal of water taking at Leitrim
On July 21, 2008, the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal dismissed a motion by Findlay Creek Properties Ltd. The motion sought to dismiss an application for Leave to Appeal a permit issued by the Ministry of the Environment to pump water out of Leitrim Wetland. The appeal is spearheaded by the Greenspace Alliance and the Sierra Club of Canada on behalf of the Friends of Leitrim Wetland.
The Permit To Take Water (PTTW) would permit construction of further phases of Tartan and Tamarack Homes’s Findlay Creek Village development south of Leitrim Road, between Bank and Albion. The Friends contend that part of this new phase is in fact within the Provincially Significant Wetland; and that drainage will damage the Wetland that is supposed to be protected.
The appellants were represented by Linda McCaffrey and her team in the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Ottawa.
The developer had applied for a PTTW and amended it twice, arguing that in the end it was not an application that was subject to appeal rights because the final application was for less than one year.
The Tribunal, in a Decision written by Vice-Chair Dirk VanderBent, firmly dismissed these arguments, asserting instead that the Ministry “has the authority and, indeed, the obligation to determine the nature and extent of a proposed water taking, independent of the time period stipulated in the application”. The Ministry must determine “through realistic assessment of the undertaking” whether the proposal ‘would authorize the taking of water over a period of one year or more’ – the legal criterion for an application to be appealable.
Here is the Decision (26 pages, 484 KB).
Erwin
30 July 2008