Agricultural and natural heritage system mapping - local concerns

NRU
Nov. 10, 2018
By Dominik Matusik

The provincial government is preparing to finalize its mapping of the region's agricultural and natural heritage systems, amidst outstanding concerns that local nuances are not being sufficiently considered.

As part of the updated Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the province is mapping regional agricultural, and natural heritage systems outside of the Greenbelt.

Hamilton planning director Steve Robichaud told NRU that the province's Land Evaluation and Area Review methodology conflicts with a similar assessment recently undertaken by the city. He says that the province's mapping could inhibit certain agriculture-related rural land uses, resource-based commercial and industrial, both future and existing, as well as community uses (e.g. churches) which would become legal nonconforming.

"In preparing our rural official plan, we had undertaken a LEAR study and we translated that into official plan mapping and designations," he says. "And as a result, the province in [its] approval function, made changes. We negotiated a settlement with the province and those designations came into force and effect that identified rural and agricultural land in the rural area. The LEAR system that the province is using would essentially re-designate a significant amount of those rural lands to agriculture… The provincial mapping would make it very difficult to provide for the full range of normal land uses that you find in the rural area, and essentially would be undoing what we had previously negotiated."

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson Kristy Denette said in an email to NRU that feedback from municipalities is being taken into account in finalizing the agricultural system mapping.

"The Ontario government is committed to protecting farmland as a provincial resource, and to enable  agri-food sector viability and growth," she says. "The agricultural system [mapping] is a new approach that is an integral part of the province's commitment to protect farmland and to promote Ontario's thriving agri-food sector.

"[OMAFRA] consulted extensively on the agricultural system implementation procedures and related mapping to help municipalities make informed land use planning, local food and economic development decisions consistently across the Greater Golden Horseshoe… OMAFRA heard from a range of stakeholders and municipalities regarding the agricultural system approach. The province's mapping process is explained in detail and additional guidance is included in the implementation procedures to explain how municipalities can refine the agricultural land base map when they update their official plans."

In addition to agricultural system mapping, the provincial government has also mapped the region's natural heritage system outside of the Greenbelt. According to Denette, this will be mapped out as an overlay and contain some overlap with the agricultural system.

"There is overlap of the natural heritage system and the agricultural system," she says. "…An overlay is applied overtop of a certain geographic area already designated within an official plan. The intent of an overlay is to apply additional regulations on development. The conditions imposed by an overlay are in addition to, and not in lieu of, the permissions or restrictions associated with any underlying designation. Both the Growth Plan and Greenbelt Plan require the NHS to be mapped as an overlay. As such, both the NHS policies and Agricultural System policies would apply where they overlap…The full range of agricultural uses, agricultural related uses, on-farm diversified uses and normal farm practices are permitted in the natural heritage system. There are some minimum requirements if new buildings and structures are to be located near natural heritage and water resource features."

Robichaud says that Hamilton staff also has concerns with the natural heritage system mapping, primarily in regards to the scale being used, but also in terms of its potential to create redundancy with municipal policy, and other provincial plans. "One of the fundamental concerns we had [with] the natural heritage mapping was simply the scale," he says. "The province was using a parcel block of 100 ha. And there's very few 100-ha blocks of land in Hamilton. Using that scale, there's an opportunity to either miss features or to overdesignate."

Denette says that the agricultural and natural heritage systems maps only include those features located outside the Greenbelt. These will link up to the systems within the Greenbelt.

"The criteria and methods used to develop and map the proposed Growth Plan natural heritage system were selected to identify a regional, landscape scale system and may not fully correspond with local natural heritage systems identified by municipalities," she says.

"The criteria and methods used to develop the regional scale proposed natural heritage system may be applied to local level municipal natural heritage systems within settlement areas or in other parts of the municipality where there is an interest. Due to the differences in scale, technical staff may consider making adjustments to minimum size thresholds for core areas and linkages for local level municipal natural heritage systems."

The provincial government is currently reviewing comments and anticipates releasing revised maps in early 2018.