Ontario Construction News staff writer
The Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) has dismissed appeals against the location of the County of Simcoe’s Environmental Resource and Recovery Centre (ERRC) project in Springwater Township and approved an official plan amendment needed for the project to proceed.
(On June 1, 2021, The Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) was amalgamated and continued into the OLT.
In the Jan. 25 ruling, OLT vice-chair Sharyn Vincent said she was not convinced the project would cause significant harm to the forest or wildlife.
“The evidence does not support the assertions…that the significant woodlands will be threatened,” she wrote.
“The tribunal, having made the determination that the ERRC can be accommodated with no negative impacts, finds that OPA 2 and the proposed amendments to the official plan and zoning amendments for the Township of Springwater, are consistent with the PPS, conform with the GP, and generally conform to the policies of the County OP.”
The development of the ERRC will create more than 100 direct and indirect local jobs in construction, the trades and solid waste management, and will save taxpayers approximately $1.6 million per year in waste transfer and haulage costs. End products such as fertilizers will be sold to the local agricultural sector.
Located in a rural area with distance from community developments: The buildings and infrastructure will take up just 5 per cent of the 207-acre Freele Tract county-owned property, with 95 per cent of the forest and trees remaining untouched to provide additional buffers. The county is committed to seeing that the trees that have been removed will be compensated for.
The facility footprint avoids environmental impacts to ground water and surface water features and is not located on prime agricultural land. The site is also centrally located in the county with strong access to local and regional road networks.
According to the OLT ruling, there was no compelling evidence provided that led to questioning the merit or efficacy of the proposed program and mitigation work to address any potential impacts on local bird and bat habitats.
“We applaud the decision by the Ontario Land Tribunal which is an important step forward in the process to develop the County’s Environmental Resource Recovery Centre (ERRC), County Warden George Cornell said in a statement.
“Siting a waste facility will always be a challenging process; however, this decision validates the significant planning, engineering, environmental and scientific studies/evaluation that went into the selection of this rural site located on Horseshoe Valley Road in a small section of the County’s Freele Forest Tract.”
County landfills are reaching capacity, our population is increasing, as a society we’re producing more waste, the costs of outsourcing and contracting waste services is rising and investment in diversion and organics programs are becoming a necessity.
Further approvals and processes are required from multiple levels of government before the project can proceed. We look forward to working with these, and with interested members of the public, going forward.
Currently, the county hauls organic green bin materials to a processing facility in Elmira each day. The county is currently travelling 3600km/week trucking organics for processing. The OLT decision recognized that the ERRC will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from currently hauling organic materials outside the County and save costs long term.