November 26, 2009

Remediation

Brownfield plan falls to opposition in Orillia, Ontario

$6 million, nine years invested in recreation complex scheme

SAUL CHERNOS

correspondent

Brownfield remediation projects are often celebrated. Citizens, eager to see neglected or contaminated properties put to constructive use, are supportive — or at least tolerant — once environmental and land-use studies are made public and questions are answered.

The east Toronto waterfront, left a mess by long-gone manufacturing plants and oil storage facilities, is quickly becoming home to burgeoning entertainment and high-tech sectors. In British Columbia, the 2010 Winter Games has prompted the redevelopment of polluted sites across the lower mainland and along the corridor to Whistler.

There was similar anticipation and excitement in December 2000 when the City of Orillia broached a plan to build an $18.7-million multi-use recreational facility, or MURF with a pool arena and playing fields.

In 2003, the city purchased a 36-acre block that once housed foundry and manufacturing operations adjacent to the downtown and helped launch a community fundraising effort.

This past July, however, following a protracted struggle with pollution, soaring costs and challenges from a citizens’ group, plans for the MURF hit the ice with a giant thud.

Although proponents are continuing to press ahead, Orillia City Council officially folded the project’s fundraising arm, Your Community in Motion, and offered to return $1.7 million in donations.

“We’re still working with the Ministry of the Environment,” Orillia Mayor Ron Stevens said, acknowledging that the ministry has repeatedly turned down the city’s applications.

The ministry has returned two risk assessment proposals, and the city recently submitted a third one. “Every time we submit a response back they give us more (questions),” Stevens said.

Allan Millard, a community activist, says the city has been less than forthcoming about the project, to the point where people in the community have serious questions that aren’t being adequately answered.

The “politics,” as Millard puts it, harken back to the very start. The city paid $1 for the site, located just outside the southern perimeter of the downtown core, yet citizens didn’t learn until close to two years later that the site was badly polluted.

Stevens says the city relied on an environmental study conducted earlier on by the property vendor, a document he concedes remained confidential under the purchase agreement.

“Everybody concerned with it (the transaction) saw it,” he said. “We were under the assumption that (the waste) was normal waste from a factory-use type of thing.”

In fact, it turned out that the site contained tricholorethylene and vinyl chloride, both volatile organic compounds and heavily regulated by the environment ministry.

Over the years, the proposal divided the community, with some residents appearing before council, decrying the lack of progress on badly-needed recreational facilities.

And citizen protests continued — picketers showed up, for instance, when the city trucked 40,000 tonnes of contaminated soil to the city landfill, near the shore of Lake Simcoe.

Even as the city made small steps to move the project forward, it was losing traction. In 2005, the environment ministry questioned the city’s soil sampling, drilling and groundwater testing and requested further work.

The citizens group went to court seeking an environmental assessment, and a judge found in their favour.

“The perceived lack of information and lack of consultation has generated concern and suspicion within the community,” Ontario environment commissioner Gord Miller remarked in his 2004-05 annual report,

Although council voted in 2006 to shift the MURF building away from the worst of the contamination, the environment ministry continued to request further revision to the city’s plans.

With remediation and construction cost estimates exceeding $60 million as of this year, the city has spent just over $6 million so far, including $2.9 million on architectural fees.

David Harper, a managing partner with Kilmer Brownfield Equity Fund in Toronto, is not involved in the MURF project but says he’s participated in numerous other redevelopments and has learned that due diligence and community support are essential.

“Understand what you’re buying, understand what the stakeholder perspectives are going to be, and engage with them early,” Harper says. “What you really want to do is build consensus in terms of the development, realizing what the site characteristics are from an environmental perspective and in terms of a development strategy.”

If this can’t be accomplished from the start, Harper says, the risk is that public amenities won’t be built and the pollution will remain unchecked.

“It’s a real shame because the brownfield site will sit there and sit there and potentially be more of a liability and more of a health concern,” Harper says.

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