Newmarket residents furious after trees cut in East Gwillimbury

YorkRegion.com
April 15, 2016
Simon Martin

Things look a little different for several Newmarket residents who live on Malvern Crescent this week.

The thriving woods that backed onto their home lots and provided a buffer to Green Lane was suddenly ripped out of the ground without warning this week.

Instead of looking out her backyard into a buffer of trees, Lin Thompson now looks out on to a barren patch of mud. 

“There should have been some communication that this was happening,” Thompson said. 

What makes the situation more complicated is that houses on Malvern back on to East Gwillimbury and the trees that were ripped up were in East Gwillimbury and not Newmarket.

“Because I’m a Newmarket resident, we don’t have a say in the matter,” Kevin Spiers said. “We were under the impression that we might get a heads up.”

The removal of the woods is a big shock for residents who have lived in the neighbourhood for a long time. Thompson, who moved to Malvern 28 years ago, said her children grew up playing there and there were paths where locals would walk.

It’s sad to see what little green space is left be torn away so quickly, Spiers added.

He had hoped the developer, DG Group, would have left a small buffer for people whose backyards abut the land.

Newmarket Ward 4 Councillor Tom Hempen was upset DG Group didn’t provide more information about when and what they were doing to the area.

Hempen said East Gwillimbury Mayor Virginia Hackson gave him a call two months ago to let him know something was going to happen in the area and put him in touch with someone from DG Group.  The company told him it would like to get to the property before the birds started nesting.

“I asked them, ‘Can you let me know when this is going to take place and any details?,” Hempen said.

When residents informed Hempen Monday that trees were being removed, he said he was caught off guard.

“I had no details at all. For me, it was disappointing that nobody communicated back. I was disappointed, quite frankly. It could have been handled a lot better.”

While residents such as Thompson and Spiers understood the land behind their houses was eventually slated for development, they wondered why DG Group removed the trees now when development of that land is scheduled to be several years down the road. 

Project manager for DG Group Peter Murphy said the trees were removed because it had to perform an archeological study of the land before development.

“It’s just part of the process. We have all these studies we need to get done,” he said.

The land will be turned over by a farmer in the meantime who will till it, similar to lands to the west of the site.   

A spokesperson for East Gwillimbury said the majority of the lands in question did not have an environmental designation except for a small wetland feature.  DG Group met with LSRCA staff on site to determine the limits of a wetland obligation and ensured that tree clearing didn’t interfere with that. 

According to the town, the tree removal didn’t affect the LSRCA area so no permit was required. Thompson is concerned the protected area will be prone to flooding and erosion because of all the adjacent tree-removal.

“I think conservation needs to have another look at the marsh protection area,” she said.

Spiers was surprised to learn East Gwillimbury didn’t have any bylaw regulating tree cutting. Thompson echoed that sentiment. “It is also very concerning that East Gwillimbury does not have a tree cutting bylaw to protect the good sized trees,” she said.

Spiers knows it was great luxury for residents to have the woods behind their houses for all these years.

He stressed concern about all displaced wildlife because of the tree cutting. “I’m not complaining about development,” he said. “But there could have been better communication.”