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Progress: A creek runs through it
Environment Activist envisions a Marsh Creek where Saint Johners can canoe, watch birds and go skating

John Mazerolle
Telegraph-Journal
Published Tuesday November 13th, 2007
Appeared on page C1



SAINT JOHN - Marsh Creek is synonymous with the very worst of this city: a creek so clogged with raw sewage from Saint Johners' toilets that it makes people passing over it gag. It's a murky and unsafe environmental disaster that runs from the edge of the city's core and through the East Side, where it drains an area that is known for flooded basements and water-covered streets.

Now imagine, as Tim Vickers of the Atlantic Coastal Action Program does, a Marsh Creek that is synonymous with the very best of this city: a crystal-clear creek that attracts Saint Johners to walk its banks and impresses newcomers with wildlife and fish in the very heart of a city. In this version, Marsh Creek is wider now, and deeper. It's been built and maintained entirely by private companies, which are thrilled to contribute. And because the creek is deeper, flooding on the East Side is not the problem it once was.

The Marsh Creek Restoration Initiative is, Vickers hopes, a win-win-win solution because:

* It will improve the environment.

* It will make things easier on industry.

* It will reduce flooding.

In this project, the city's residential, economic and environmental progress all merge into one, and a creek runs through it.

"We believe we have the solution," said Vickers, the environmental group's executive director, "a phenomenal solution that almost anyone would look at and say, 'This is great.' "

Talk of a resurrected Marsh Creek, due to be clean in five to seven years as the city treats its sewage, is nothing new. People are already looking forward to when the creek's bottom will be visible again.

But ACAP's plans go well beyond a clean creek and a rudimentary walking path. In fact, the environment initiative could actually help energy hub projects and East Side shopping.

Currently, if a company undertakes a development it must compensate government for environmental damage, Vickers explained. At the city level, East Side development must be offset by payments for displaced water, which collects in large holes dug by the city. At the federal level, any fish habitat destroyed must be replaced by three times the fish habitat elsewhere. And, provincially, any wetlands destroyed must be replaced by six to 10 times more wetlands somewhere else.

With so much development happening in Saint John, five companies have approached ACAP and asked how to develop wetlands, low-lying areas where moisture is usually present.

That's where ACAP's solution comes in: when developers must compensate the government for development, they will do so in the Marsh Creek drainage basin. That 42-square-kilometre area includes five major tributaries and drains Glen Falls, Mystery Lake, Rockwood Park, the Courtenay Bay area and the East Side shopping district.

If, for instance, a box store or heavy industrial company wants to build and it will be damaging wetlands in the process, it will know that the Marsh Creek restoration initiative is the place to replace them.

Industry and business would have one less development headache to deal with, additional commercial development could take place on the East Side without the same level of flooding concerns and the city would get a tip-top environmental park.

"It meets companies' needs and at the same it meets the community's needs," Vickers said.

In a recent closed-door report to common council, city staff wrote that, "there are 'swamps' or 'local drainage pools' which are proposed for development. The concept that such areas are considered 'wetlands' is going to hinder efficient development."

Vickers says that, "all verbal judo aside," wetlands are wetlands and they're important both for drainage and for wildlife. Two types of people have been getting in touch with ACAP about development and the destruction of wetlands - the concerned businesses and frustrated East Side citizens.

Vickers has taken the group's idea to city and provincial departments, developers and some community groups, and he hopes to have the project in front of common council within the next two months. Vickers would not release the names of the five companies involved, although that would likely occur as the project unfolds. He doesn't have an estimate of the overall project's cost, but is confident it would be in the millions of dollars. If the proposal was in place today, work could start immediately in a number of areas, and the entire project would be completed within a decade.

The project will be ACAP's key goal for the next five years, and will focus initially on four main areas:

1) Courtenay Bay forebay: The area on the inland side of the Courtenay Bay causeway would connect directly to Harbour Passage and include a walkway jutting into the middle where people could watch for wildlife.

2) Marsh Creek straightaway: The section of Marsh Creek that runs behind Rothesay Avenue from roughly Staples to Strescon would include trails for walking, cycling and skiing.

3) Commerce Drive wetland: The area at the bottom of the hill behind McAllister Place would become a more expansive wetland.

4) Coldbrook flood plain: The city's flood catchment area in Glen Falls is now a "scar" just off Golden Grove Road that fills in with water occasionally. ACAP envisions it as a standing lake to be used for swimming immediately adjacent to more expanded wetlands.

The development would include a nature trail stretching from the Courtenay Bay area connecting to a path that would eventually take cyclists and hikers to McAllister Place on the East Side, crossing over four or five roads on the way. Canoeing, birdwatching, interpretive signs, and outdoor skating would all likely become parts of the development.

Vickers sees the project as Saint John's first try at sustainable development - the concept that any present-day development should not compromise future generations.

With global warming causing the world's waters to rise, and Saint John sinking about two millimetres every year, the number of wetlands in Saint John has to increase, no matter what, Vickers said.

Gone are the days when common council had to accept whatever terms developers laid before them, Vickers said.

"The opportunity here is for council to recognize that they're in the driver's seat."

Sounds good to me