As Official Plan Showdown Approaches, Ecology Ottawa Asks Council to Reject Call for More Sprawl

Feb. 23, 2010

The decision by Councillor Rick Chiarelli and Mayor Larry O'Brien to try to reverse a completely justified urban planning decision has Ecology Ottawa mobilizing residents across the city to write and telephone city councillors and the mayor, and attend a rally against expanding the boundary. The rally, organized by Our Ottawa, will be held at City Hall, at the Lisgar Street entrance, at 12 noon on Wednesday, Feb. 24th.

Last year city council finally took a stand against sprawl by rejecting a proposed 842-hectare expansion of the urban boundary. Council instead voted for a smaller expansion of 222 hectares over the next five years. Now, two dozen development companies and landowners are appealing council's decision to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). Last year, developers lobbied for 2,000 hectares of more suburbs and sprawl and now they hope the OMB will reverse the city's decision.

Councillor Chiarelli's proposal to reverse last year's boundary decision -- reverting back to a 842-hectare expansion -- could be voted on by council as early as this Wednesday.

As a recent editorial in The Ottawa Citizen correctly noted, sprawl's destructive effects are well known: it promotes pollution and excess energy consumption from car traffic, and increases run-off of polluted water from miles of asphalt. It is also expensive, creating far-flung infrastructure that is costly to service and maintain.

Further, the success of the city's new light rail plan, which the mayor claims to champion, depends on greater density inside the Greenbelt -- not more sprawl.

"Any legal costs associated with fighting a battle at the OMB are likely to be insignificant compared to the long-term financial and environmental costs to the city of all this potential sprawl," said Ian Thomson, Ecology Ottawa steering committee member. "It is short-sighted to save on legal costs today by condemning the city to major service cost increases that will be locked in for decades to come."

For the OMB case, the onus is on the developers to prove that the city has erred. The city's position is completely defensible, as it has maintained more than enough developable residential land to meet the needs of the next 15 years. In fact, city planners maintain that we could have met that provincial standard without adding any land at all.

Ecology Ottawa is a non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots community organization working to make Ottawa the green capital of Canada. Learn more and sign up for our e-newsletter at www.ecologyottawa.ca

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For more information, please contact:

Trevor Haché, Ecology Ottawa board member, (613) 866-9912
Mike Buckthought, Ecology Ottawa steering committee member, helios@ncf.ca