Sewage backup East Gwillimbury growth

NRU
Sept. 2, 2015
By Edward LaRusic

York Region’s delay in building a new sewage system threatens to back up residential growth in East Gwillimbury, causing the town to accommodate a large amount of growth over a short timeframe. The town is concerned it will not be able to provide the requisite social services to support that growth in a five rather than a 10-year period.

East Gwillimbury mayor Virginia Hackson told NRU that the town wants to phase new residential growth in so it can build complete communities. She noted that the town doesn’t even have its own high school currently and has to rely heavily on Newmarket and Whitchurch-Stouffville to provide social services for its residents.

“You can build homes; they are much easier to put into a community than the supporting services that come along with it... With the growth that we are expecting, we’re going to need to have [supporting services] in our community itself, not having people travel outside for services.”

Town staff warns that a gradual phase in of new residential units is threatened by York Region’s delay in implementing the Upper York Sewage System - meant to accommodate growth in Aurora, Newmarket and East Gwillimbury - as the region figures out how to pay for it.

Town planning director Nick Pileggi told NRU that the town is already struggling to meet its 2031 growth target of 86,500 people, as the sewage system has been delayed until 2024. Meanwhile, the way in which the region decides to distribute the 2041 growth targets could change the town’s 2031 numbers and potentially increase the number of people the town is expected to accommodate by 2031.

“[Even though] the Upper York Sewage System gets delayed, there’s still a requirement to meet a certain [population target] by 2031. So it’s getting jammed,” he said. “The amount of growth from 2021 to 2031 is now jammed in that smaller, five-year period [between 2026 and 2031] rather than in the 10-year period.”

York Region is currently consulting on three draft growth scenarios that direct either 40 per cent (status quo), 50 per cent or about 65 per cent residential intensification within the municipal built boundaries between 2031 and 2041. The third scenario would result in no growth occurring in the whitebelt. (See the July 29 edition of NRU for a full breakdown of population and employment targets.)

Of the three scenarios, Pileggi said that only the 50 per cent scenario is realistic, the other two would require the town to absorb too many new residents in too short a time frame.

Pileggi said that continuing the 40 per cent intensification scenario to 2041 - as is regional official plan policy - is heavily reliant on the region providing the Upper York Sewage System. It essentially carries forward the problems with the current scenario, requiring an “unprecedented” amount of growth - 49,500 to 85,200 residents - between 2026 to 2031.

Town planner Trish Elliot said that the “no urban expansion” option isn’t realistic for the town either, as it has little land within the existing built boundary to accommodate intensification, and what does exist is privately serviced.

“So even in order to get intensification in there, we’re looking at [needing] expensive infrastructure. Which is counter-intuitive to the thought of capitalizing on existing infrastructure; we don’t have it in those areas.”

Plus, with the 65 per cent intensification scenario the town would have to double its population from 50,500 to 101,600 between 2026 and 2031. That would put a big demand on resident services that staff isn’t confident the town could provide, said Elliott.

Under the 50 per cent intensification scenario, the town would have to accommodate 45,500 to 66,300 residents during the five-year period between 2026 and 2031, a significant decrease from the other scenarios that would require less new infrastructure and be easier to accommodate.

But Elliot said staff is recommending a fourth option, the “hybrid” scenario with about 48 per cent intensification within the built boundary - this reflects the average annual amount of intensification currently occurring within York Region. A 48 per cent intensification scenario, said Elliott, would allow for an efficient use of land and infrastructure, while minimizing the amount of whitebelt lands needed for growth. And under this scenario the town would not being overwhelmed by population growth.

Regardless of the scenario chosen, town staff is pushing the region to complete the Upper York Sewage System by 2020 - not the planned 2024 - so the town can better phase in growth to 2031.

Hackson said she wants the sewage project completed earlier too.

“There’s a lot of background work that [the region] continues to do - [it] didn’t put that work on hold. It’s only a matter of [determining] the financing of it...[the town continues] to expect that [the region is] going to find some way of moving it back into the capital plan for 2020.“

York Region policy research and forecasting manager Paul Bottomley told NRU that East Gwillimbury is one of a very few municipalities in the region, along with Markham and Vaughan, which has a significant amount of whitebelt land available. This availability is why the region expects the town to play such a large role in accommodating new growth compared to similar-sized municipalities such as King, which are constrained by the Greenbelt Plan.

The region plans to accommodate an additional 290,000 new residents between 2031 and 2041. Despite delays to the Upper York Sewage System, Bottomley said the town is “best equipped to accommodate a large share of that growth post 2024.”

“We’re conforming to amendment 2 to the growth plan...All nine [municipalities] are expected to contribute in reaching those targets.”

He said the region will absolutely consider recommending an alternative growth scenario when it brings forth a recommendation to regional council in November. But he said moving the timeframe of the Upper York Sewage System to 2020, will depend on regional council’s priorities and how much growth actually occurs in the region.

“If we grow a lot faster than what we’re anticipating, with higher growth you end up receiving higher development charge revenue. If that happens over a sustained period, over a number of years, we would consider advancing some of the schedules of these key projects. That’s not to say it would be that particular project - there are a number across the region that have been delayed - but certainly it would be considered if we had that higher growth.”