Environmental Assessment
March 12th, 2010
This post is part of a series of articles exploring the Environmental Assessment process and how it’s shaping Toronto. The series focuses on four major developments currently at the EA stage.
Photos like this one seem like they were taken a lifetime ago. Hilarious bathing costumes aside, the idea of swimming in the Don River is about as foreign an experience as I can think of. I know the Don as a sidekick to the DVP and as a treasure trove of beer cans and shopping carts. Though I grew up close to it, I have never dipped a toe into it or taken a drink straight from the river.
Can you blame me? From kindergarten on up, we were taught that the Don was dirty. And my teachers weren’t wrong. The Don River does not meet Provincial water quality objectives and has the dubious distinction of making the International Joint Commission’s list of 43 “areas of concern” in the Great Lakes Basin. It is one of the city’s most degraded ecosystems.
As it turns out, you can blame me. Along with nearly half of Toronto’s residents who make up the Don River sewershed, I’ve had a hand in the Don’s current condition. The sewers which combine and carry away stormwater and sanitary waste bound for the Ashbridges Bay treatment plant routinely overflow, loading up the Don with bacteria and nutrient pollution.
As it stands, our wastewater infrastructure progressively degrades this ecosystem and the water we drink. We’ve created a system which undermines itself and the value that we place on clean drinking water and a healthy environment.
With the release of the City’s Wet Weather Flow Master Plan in 2003 and the subsequent Don River and Central Waterfront Project, the City of Toronto is trying to stem the tide, initiating the process of restoring e.colic to bucolic.
The City proposes to address the need for additional sewer capacity to meet forecasted demands as the city grows while better managing the “wet weather” flows which wreak havoc on the Don. This requires changes at the source (lessening the load by disconnecting downspouts, planting trees, and promoting green roofs), during conveyance (allowing percolation of wastewater into soil for natural filtration where appropriate, separating sanitary from storm sewers, upgrading large trunk sewers) and at the end of the pipe (improving the quality of the water emerging from the Don’s 51 combined sewer outflows).
This project is subject to a Municipal Class EA.
February 5th, 2010
This post is part of a series of articles exploring the Environmental Assessment process and how it’s shaping Toronto. The series focuses on four major developments currently at the EA stage.
Though you may not know much about the person sitting next to you on the streetcar, chances are you have at least one thing in common: you both want to get to where you’re going quickly. Whether we are heading towards Kennedy Station or a revitalized approach to urban transportation, we’re understandably impatient about arriving at our destination.
In the case of a better transit system, each of us is silently groaning, “are we there yet?” And why shouldn’t we? Changes to the TTC will alter our paths and patterns, economic possibilities, and environmental realities in a way that few other projects can.
Like a long ride with many transfers, the environmental assessment process is notoriously arduous — which is why the Ontario Government made the bold move in 2008 to streamline transit undertakings as a unique class of environmental assessments known as Transit Project Assessments.
In this edition of the EA series, I’ll be looking at the Transit Project Assessment process through the lens of the Scarborough-Malvern Light Rail Transit (SMLRT) project. This project, in various incarnations, has been a transit pipe dream since the 1980s. Bandied back and forth for several decades, it gained steam with the Transit City announcement in 2007 and again last year when Toronto’s 2015 Pan Am Games bid was accepted.
January 15th, 2010
By popular demand, Spacing presents a print-out, fold-up, all-purpose guide to Environmental Assessments in Ontario.
What is an Environmental Assessment?
An Environmental Assessment (EA) is a planning tool used to identify the potential environmental impacts of proposed development and incorporate considerations of those impacts into decisions about our future. The process is governed by Ontario’s Environmental Assessment Act, 1990.
What kinds of projects require an EA?
It’s tough to say for sure. All public and some private plans, programs, and projects with implications for the public good are required to complete an assessment. Typically, roads, landfills, water and sewer undertakings, power generation and transmission, forestry, and transit projects complete an EA. That being said, the Minister of the Environment can exempt projects from the EA process and only one Provincial plan, Ontario’s Hydro Demand Supply Plan, has ever had an EA Hearing.
Who is involved in an EA?
The following parties play a role in the process:
The proponent — The proponent is the project’s champion. They initiate the development proposal and answer the requests and questions of other participating parties.
Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE): Environmental Assessment and Approvals Branch — This is the one-stop shop for regulatory environmental approvals in Ontario. They oversee the implementation of the Environmental Assessment Act.
Provincial ministries and agencies — Various Provincial ministries and agencies are involved in reviewing the project and assessment as needed.
Federal ministries and agencies — Federal ministries and agencies are involved in reviewing the project and assessment when projects require Federal approvals, permits, licenses, or funding.
Ontario Minister of the Environment — The Provincial environment minister, currently John Gerretsen, can exempt projects from the EA process. The minister also releases assessments for public comment, determines whether a hearing is necessary, and accepts or rescinds the final decision.
Public — The public has a few chances to engage in the EA process. Notice and opportunities for public comment are given when the proponent submits the Terms of Reference (more on that later), when the EA is submitted, and if the assessment proceeds to a hearing.
Ontario Cabinet — Cabinet must approve the environment minister’s decision to accept the EA.
Environmental Review Tribunal — The Tribunal oversees EAs if and when they proceed to the hearing stage. They offer a decision on the basis of testimony at the hearing.
How does it work?
January 5th, 2010
This is the first of a four-part series of articles exploring the Environmental Assessment process and how it’s shaping Toronto. The series will focus on four major developments currently at the EA stage.
Of the people, for the people, by the people.
Sure, Lincoln may have been referring to American governance in his Gettysburg Address, but his words stand for Ontario’s Environment Assessment Act too. Indeed, the Province inscribed our primary environmental planning tool with Lincoln’s sentiment: “The purpose of this Act is the betterment of the people of the whole or any part of Ontario by providing for the protection, conservation, and wise management in Ontario of the environment.”
But how well does our Environmental Assessment Act work? Does this safeguard ensure that our environment is protected? Does it facilitate the betterment of the people of Ontario? How would we know if it did?
Over the course of this four-part series, I’ll be assessing the Environment Assessment (EA) process. Using the lens of four major projects currently winding their way through the bowels of the EA system, I hope to share some perspective on the nature of the process and its success in protecting our environment. First up: the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard Reconfiguration Project.
Initiated in 2008 by the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto, a corporation set up by federal, provincial, and municipal authorities to oversee revitalization of the waterfront, the Gardiner Reconfiguration will determine the future of two major arteries and reinvent our relationship with the waterfront. Because of the scale and nature of the project, it been termed an “Individual Environment Assessment.” With an eye to the potential for large environmental impacts, the Ministry of the Environment requires that a Terms of Reference (ToR) document be produced to guide the EA process. Think of the ToR as a map to guide us from an infrastructure idea to a (hopefully) revitalized reality.
