'Unmitigated disaster': environmental groups warn York Region poised to bulldoze countryside

Thestar.com
Sept. 20, 2021

York Region council has decided to take a second look at a controversial plan allowing a significant amount of new development on rural lands, after advocacy groups and developers raised concerns at a special meeting Sept. 16.

The six-hour-long council meeting dealt with a staff report examining where to put new growth in the next 30 years.

Regional planning staff recommended a plan calling for 50 per cent of the region’s growth to be confined to existing settlement areas until 2041. Over the following 10 years, 55 per cent of growth would take place in those areas.

The remaining growth would come from opening up 2,050 hectares of land in whitebelt farmland and countryside areas to development.

Environmental activists and some councillors criticized the last-minute notice of the meeting and the decision to schedule it on Yom Kippur.

Council voted to refer the matter to an Oct. 21 special council meeting to allow time for additional information to be brought forward.

Environmental Defence lawyer Phil Pothen called the proposal a “massive developer land grab” that keeps residents dependent on cars.

The plan would commit York Region to more than double the rate at which countryside is destroyed, paving over some of the last non-urbanized headwaters of the Rouge and Don rivers, and push a huge volume development into the sensitive Lake Simcoe watershed, he said.

There is room for growth within existing settlements with secondary and garden suites, semi-detached homes and highrise developments, Pothen said.

The province is calling for an unprecedented amount of growth in York Region,  forecasting a population of 2.02-million people in the region by 2051, Paul Freeman, the region’s chief planner, said.

Freeman said the region's proposed plan balances objectives for housing supply, affordability and choice, social, economic, environmental considerations, and infrastructure needs for water, sewage and transit.

Last March, the region proposed to allow urban expansion on 80 hectares of whitebelt lands in King and more than 1,200 in Vaughan, 1,490 in Markham, 245 in East Gwillimbury and 375 in Whitchurch-Stouffville.

Not all municipalities agreed with the strategy.

Markham asked to reduce the whitebelt development expansion and consider higher levels of intensification, and King requested less whitebelt development and more growth in villages, including Nobleton.

East Gwillimbury wants the town’s entire whitebelt lands open to urban expansion -- something regional staff said was not possible without the currently on-hold Upper York Sewage Solution.

Claire Malcomson, executive director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, raised concerns about the lake’s ability to accommodate sewage from new development.

"Your cottaging and water skiing activities are going to be yucky and stinky if you do not take the protection of Lake Simcoe seriously," she said.

In a joint letter submitted to council, the coalition, York Region Environmental Alliance, Ontario Headwaters Institute and other organizations called for zero settlement area boundary expansions for 10 years.

The region paved over 6,400 acres between 2001 and 2019, the letter said, and the proposed plan would see the region develop a further 25,000 acres by 2051 -- more than 800 acres per year.

"Choosing the lowest intensification rate allowed by law does virtually nothing for today’s residents, who need housing they can afford, and it allows for a greater share of single-family homes, which, acre per acre, are the most environmentally damaging."

A form letter signed by almost 200 residents warned that expanding urban boundaries would lead to an "unmitigated disaster for our natural heritage and our farmland … York Region must use the next 30 years to fix its 20th-century planning mistakes, not to double down on them."

Many of the delegations called for 70 to 80 per cent of development growth to be confined to urban settlement boundaries.

Paul Bottomley, the region’s manager of planning, said that would be risky, as the market may not support higher density structures and families may look elsewhere for single-family homes.

An adopted plan must be submitted to the Ontario government prior to July 2022.