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Sunday, December 30, 2012

STORMWATER STUDY COMPLETED

The City of Toronto has finished its environmental assessment of the Etobicoke Waterfront Stormwater Management Facilities Study.  FOSS has just received a "Notice of Study Completion" and it is reproduced below.  The City's backgrounder can be read online here.  If you search "stormwater" in the search bar above, you will find more from the FOSS website on this.   
In spite of written submissions from Friends of Sam Smith Park, Citizens' Concerned for the Future of the Etobicoke Waterfront and from many others interested in applying natural solutions to the stormwater problem; and in spite of a number of public consultations in which not one community member spoke in favour of what they have eventually decided upon; and in spite of a Community Work Group that rejected a solely engineered solution, all natural options that would have added water to our park's "lost" creeks and increased wetland habitat have been dismissed and none are incorporated in to the chosen design.

The chosen solution is the one the City wanted in the first place.  Why any of us ever thought our opinions would be seriously considered was, in hindsight, a bit over optimistic!

So, we're going to get the "big pipe".  All water in the South Etobicoke stormwatershed will be routed in to a large collector pipe and treated in a huge shaft located in Sam Smith Park.   
While the need to improve shoreline water quality for aquatic vegetation and wildlife is very important, give only engineers a problem to solve and the answer usually turns out be an engineered one! (with apologies to any "friends" who are engineers)

We've all been shafted!!!



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