Rural Issues

[waterloowarrior]

Building outside the rules
Councillor fears ignoring official plan, experts sets bad precedent

Jake Rupert
Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

OTTAWA - Councillors have voted to approve a construction project on prime farmland outside Edwards, violating the city's official plan and bypassing experts' advice. It's just the latest such decision, part of a pattern that has at least one councillor worried.

The application, by Adrian Schouten, is for creation of two residential lots with wells and septic tanks on Yorks Corners Road. Last week, city planners recommended against the rezoning at a meeting of the agriculture and rural affairs committee.

The planners said it would contravene a provincial policy aimed at protecting good agricultural land, and the city's official plan. Furthermore, there isn't enough groundwater to support homes on the site, and what's there is poor quality. Plans for septic tanks are incomplete, there is plenty of other rural land in the area that could be developed instead, and building on the lots would not leave enough access to the property's remaining farmland, the staff planners said.

The advice was clear: Reject Mr. Schouten's rezoning application. Despite this, councillors voted to accept the application and the matter will go to city council for a vote next week.

In a similar case earlier this year, the committee and council again went against the advice of experts and voted to allow residential construction in an area of West Carleton where the groundwater could be salty enough to pose a health risk.

Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess said allowing such

rezoning needs to stop.

He said provincial and city planning policies are developed, reviewed, and amended constantly by experts because there is public value in having them.

"The goals are to preserve farmland, in this case, because we don't have enough of it," he said. "In other cases, the rules are there to protect health, provide buffers or curb urban sprawl, and there's good, sound logic to aiming for these goals.

"This application looks like development in the wrong way. All the rules in place are being (flouted). If council approves things like this, it means the rules don't mean much, and the rules are there for reasons."

The city's director of planning approvals, John Moser, agrees that there are "valid reasons" behind provincial and city land-use policies, and in this case, they are there to preserve prime agricultural land.

He also said the city should be careful about setting precedents because each time an exception is made, it chips away at the strength of the policy or plan it violates. City planners won't see exceptions as precedents, Mr. Moser said, but it still becomes easier for other approval bodies to fall into the "we did it before, why not again" approach.

Osgoode Councillor Doug Thompson represents the ward that includes the project outside Edwards and he sits on rural affairs committee. He said he understands the concerns cited by Mr. Bloess and Mr. Moser, but he thinks the provincial policy on rural land use is "draconian."

He said it's very hard for farmers to even get lots on their own land to build retirement homes when passing the farm on to relatives.

While that's not the point of the Edwards application, Mr. Thompson says there are already houses on either side of the proposed lots and across the road. As well, the land, although designated as prime agricultural, is configured in such a way that it is too difficult to farm. As far as the water problems, Mr. Thompson said they can be dealt with and the land is suitable for septic tanks.

"When you look at it in total in this area, it makes sense to me," he said. "In many other areas, it wouldn't."

He's going to support the rezoning at council, but he knows there may be a price to pay.

"Every time you sort of tinker with the rules or bend them - and in this case, I admit, that's what we are doing - it leaves the door open a bit wider for people to say, 'Well, you did that there, so why not here'," he said. "But in this particular case, I think it's one that begs for support (of the rezoning application)."

© Ottawa Citizen 2008

here's the staff report
http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/cit...%20Corners.htm

this proposal clearly goes against the PPS/OP, and there are numerous water issues, and the consultants hydrogeological study doesn't give conclusive evidence that there will be enough/good quality water for these lots. The 'sympathy' of rural councillors is part of the reason these requirements for municipalities to be consistent with the PPS were put in the first place; rural severances keep getting approved because everyone has a sob story. It leads to losses of agricultural land, groundwater issues, loss of rural character, increased conflict between residential and agricultural uses, etc etc. These type of decisions make me question the role of the ARAC and how well they can be trusted to make decisions like this (and calls into question more rural delegation/devolution that people keep calling for). It doesn't matter if Councillor Thomson thinks the rules are draconian, he still has to follow them...