'Ploy to defer it until after the election': York Region chairperson slams province for expert panel on Upper York Sewage Solution

East Gwillimbury council asked for the expert panel not to be lengthy process that further delay decision on UYSS

Yorkregion.com
July 6, 2021
Simon Martin

East Gwillimbury is calling on the expert panel convened by the province on Upper York Sewage Solutions (UYSS) to make a decision quickly.

The province’s decision last month to strike an expert panel caught York Region and East Gwillimbury off-guard. An environmental assessment for the project that would enable the forecasted growth of an additional 34,500 people in Aurora, 27,000 people in Newmarket and 91,500 people in East Gwillimbury has been sitting with the province since 2014.

York Region chairperson Wayne Emmerson wasn’t shy in critiquing the government’s decision at an East Gwillimbury council meeting on June 22.

“It was a ploy to defer it until after the election,” he said. “When they actually said they want a full year to study this. This has been studied to death ... I would strongly suggest they shorten the timeline.”

East Gwillimbury Mayor Virginia Hackson echoed that sentiment.

“I think it is a stall tactic,” she said. “It doesn’t need to take a year.”

For Hackson, the expert panel was the 22 public meetings and the entire process of the EA.

According to York Region, they spent $25 million on the EA alone, the most expensive in the region’s history.

“That’s the level of commitment and study and detail,” said York Region commissioner of environmental services Erin Mahoney.

The region expected approval for the project in 2015. Opposition to the project from the Chippewas of Georgina Island delayed a decision on the project, and that decision has lingered on the minister’s desk for six years and multiple governments.

Emmerson said he told Premier Doug Ford the delays have set growth back 10 years.

“I’m very disappointed in the province of Ontario. We have done everything they have asked us to do,” he said. “It wasn’t York Region’s idea to go Lake Simcoe. It was the province’s.”

The lack of a decision has had a lasting impact on East Gwillimbury.

The town has received ambitious growth targets from the province that has the town’s population set to exceed 90,000 in 2031 and 118,000 in 2041.

But the town will run out of servicing capacity in the next five years.

Ward 2 Coun. Tara Roy-DiClemente said that has a profound domino effect on the community.

“While we may not be able to build new subdivisions, we have subdivisions that have been started and cannot be finished,” she said. “We talk about building complete communities. Well, this is the opposite of that.”

Another domino effect is the Holland Landing Sewage Lagoons.

They were supposed to be closed long ago, but need to stay open until the UYSS is opened for bureaucratic reasons involving the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan. The province’s delay on the UYSS decision has delayed any movement on closing the lagoons.

“We need to make sure a decision is made quickly,” Ward 1 Coun. Loralea Carruthers said. “We can’t have those lagoons for another seven or eight years. Those things needed to be decommissioned 10 years ago, not 10 years from now.”

Another matter that hangs over the UYSS is that the region has already spent $100 million on the project. Emmerson said the region has provided the province with what they would expect, including compensation, if the UYSS is not approved.

East Gwillimbury council wasn’t thrilled with the idea of the panel, but submitted that the timeline should be shortened.

“I still feel it’s a delay tactic,” Roy-DiClemente said. “We have spent hours and hours in consultation in public meetings, listening. The people who say they didn’t have (a) voice, they were certainly involved in that process and they had access to those public meetings.”

Ward 3 Coun. Scott Crone said the province has a big political problem on their hands because there is no consensus.

“We want a speedy resolution to our wastewater problem,” he said. “This is a question of politics and not policy. That’s why this delay is unacceptable.”