Comment
Start fresh
The County made a deal. In 2008, Shire Hall reached a settlement with the Waring’s Creek Improvement Association in which it agreed to study the sensitive watershed serving this waterway. It didn’t happen. The County reneged on its deal.
Time and lawyerly interpretations have eroded the municipality’s strict legal responsibility, yet a powerful moral responsibility still exists. Shire Hall ought to do the right thing. There is a moment here— when it can and should do just that. The institution needs a boost of credibility.
Indeed, Shire Hall understood it once, too. It agreed, as part of the 2008 settlement with the WCIA, to conduct a comprehensive hydroG (hydrogeological, meaning a study of the flows, patterns, and trends of groundwater) of the watershed.
But about a decade ago, a fever took hold over Shire Hall. Delusions that hordes of new arrivals would soon swarm across the bridges to live in Prince Edward County took hold in the imagination of senior leadership in the municipality and a goodly share of its council.
Principles of ecology, liveability and financial prudence were discarded like wide ties, pagers and earth shoes. Such quaint ideas were deemed nuisance hurdles to be tossed aside on the path to a brave new building boom.
But the promised boom fizzled out. Before it began. The fever broke. It was never real. The folks leading the parade of delusion moved on.
It has presented an opportunity to begin a new conversation.
Understandably, the Waring’s Creek advocates remain eager to protect this watershed and assert the spirit of the 2008 agreement. Shire Hall should consider turning the page. It should do what it agreed to do nearly 20 years ago.
Specifically, Shire Hall should commission an independent hydroG assessment of this watershed. It should do so with the WCIA’s advice. It must clear the air.
The developer’s assessment of this condition and the durability of this watershed will never be entirely satisfactory. There is too much at stake. Any misstep, omission or honest error could prove ruinous.
Nor does it need to represent a precedent. These are unique circumstances—the 2008 agreement, the prior understanding of the sensitivity of this land, and the intensity of the development proposed for it. There are ample grounds to constrain such an investigation from widening beyond this watershed.
Remember WCIA’s consultant’s warning last year: “Something is very, very wrong here,” cautioned David MacGillivray in his presentation to Council in August. MacGillivray is an engineer and hydrogeologist who specializes in subdivision hydrogeology and development engineering hydrogeology. “In my almost 30 years, I have never seen an application of this scope and magnitude get as far as it has in approvals without adequate monitoring and without adequate study being done. Never seen this. It’s really a shame,” warned the expert.
Such a stark warning can not be ignored, especially when the only counterbalance is a study paid for by a developer whose self-interest is measured in the millions of dollars.
The developers’ consultants contend that any negative impacts on the watershed may be managed or mitigated. Maybe. But this is an awfully wide gulf of expert opinion. So wide, it is in the County’s interest to do its own work.
The tragic bit is that the province has abandoned small municipalities like ours. It has gutted Conservation Authorities’ ability to protect this watershed. It is up to the County now. Unprepared and underfunded, Shire Hall lacks the expertise, experience and resources to do so effectively. It’s a gap.
So Shire Hall has a couple of choices: It can either continue to take refuge under a flimsy legal shield— one that will be tested—or it can acknowledge that the world has changed. It should accept its moral obligation to meet the spirit of its agreement.
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