Evidence of meeting #14 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was area.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Is there really good pickup, though? Like you say, it's a criteria, but is there pickup from the developers that you're not having resistance but they're actually very willing and happy to do?
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
Again, so far as the greenfield development outside of the city of Toronto, it's pretty much standard practice in terms of meeting these very stringent requirements. For flow control, for erosion control, as well as water quality, you have to provide a stormwater pond within a large subdivision. To your point, generally speaking, I understand that the lots dotting the perimeter of these facilities are of higher value than the lots in the interior of the subdivision.
Conservative
City Manager, City of Hamilton
Yes. The one thing that strikes me about this proliferation of stormwater ponds, whether they be for detention or for quality purposes, is not so much the building of them, it's the maintenance of them. I know the City of Hamilton has a number of C of As attached to much of the stormwater system that's been built in the last 5 to 10 years. We're a city that has a deficit of infrastructure spending in the order of about $200 million a year. We're just trying to catch up to our capital needs. Operating is a whole other problem. When I start thinking 10 years down the road and I'm thinking of health care costs and how much money is going to be spent in those sectors, where is the money going to be to maintain the system that we're building? It may work wonderfully now, but are we going to have the wherewithal to clean them out when they need to be in order to re-establish their quality benefits?
I don't have an answer for that. All I know is that we are building them and we are requiring the developers to include them, obviously.
I would never use the term “happy” with a developer. If they're happy, I've done something wrong.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Very interesting, but I think it is important to note. That's why I keep on referring to it as a real wetland area that you're developing much more so than a retention pond. A retention pond has a lot of the issues and concerns that you are speaking about, as far as future maintenance of that, whereas a wetland area that is properly developed and built in the proper manner, the maintenance aspect of it actually goes way down. You'll see there's a natural maintenance of it, especially, as Mr. D'Andrea said, when you have flow levels that are controlled, etc. You can really have a continuous improvement in that wetland area without having to spend a lot of money on dredging or things like that. That goes back to the old way they used to do these retention ponds, but I think there's been a great uptake on that.
In fact, if you would need some information on that, I know Olds College, in Alberta, has been doing some great work on wetlands, and the building of those wetlands in these urban area and rural areas to make sure that we have that natural filter that we need.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much, Mr. Toet.
We're going to move now to Mr. McKay for the 30 seconds he has left from his previous five-minute round, when he asked about phragmites.
Liberal
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
For reasons best known to the government, they've decided to be pretty hard on the environment budget. You spoke very positively about the contribution of the Ministry of Environment to your projects, your harbour.
Have you seen the impact of these cutbacks?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
We haven't, just to be blunt. I think we've enjoyed commitments by both the federal and provincial governments in the last 5 to 10 years that we really have little to complain about.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Okay.
You talked about a P3 on biosolids. It's hard for me to imagine what's in it for a private partner on a biosolids project.
City Manager, City of Hamilton
We're looking at a couple of different technologies so we're not curtailing the market here. There are two technology streams, one of which is to turn the material into pellets to effectively create fertilizers. There is a revenue stream that does come from that. I mean, the land application has been our issue. We're running out of time and space and, quite honestly, I think society's moving on that it's not going to tolerate much more in the land application, notwithstanding the water quality problems that it does generate as well. We're in the early days here. The RFP has not gone out yet but I think there was somewhere in the order of about $30 million of funding that's going to come from the federal government in support of this.
Liberal
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
—a stage of applied research? Or is this at the stage of commercialization?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
Commercialization.... This is an RFP that's going to go out the door in the next, I think, four to five months from our shop. We've been working hand-in-hand with the federal government for over a year now. It's passed all the federal government requirements and we're basically ready to go to market.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you.
Mr. D'Andrea, the big issue with these extreme weather events, particularly the extreme precipitation events, is the rapidity with which the rain, or maybe sometimes the snow melts, will fill the system to overcapacity. Part of it is because of the way we built the cities. Or a good part of it is the way we built the cities. I have for years wondered why we parallel sidewalks in lightly travelled streets rather than simply having grass to curb or even replacing them with, if you will, passive ditches or whatever. Is there any conversation around, how should we say, taking out concrete, taking out pavement so that the rush of water is reduced?
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
To be honest with you, one of the biggest challenges that we have is the reverse. It's the interest of residents, particularly if they're in ditched roads and it doesn't happen everywhere, but in many cases they consider those drainage systems to be substandard, rural. In many cases in neighbourhoods they want sidewalks that do not exist currently because again they feel that they've been disadvantaged.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
I'm not following that. They want more sidewalks rather than fewer sidewalks.
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
They want more sidewalks and more curb and gutter, which is in the wrong direction.
The other thing that I need to highlight is that the area of stormwater management has continued to evolve over time. Currently in these new subdivisions, not only do you typically have a stormwater pond if the subdivision is of sufficient size, but we designed the sewer systems to the relative design as what we would have in place in Toronto now in the 1950s and 1960s. But what we do is we design the roads so that the road acts as an open channel. When the sewer system is overloaded, that extra stormwater runoff now flows along the road within the road allowance and then it typically outlets to a stormwater pond away from that residential area. So, we've come a long way.
The challenge for built-up areas like ourselves in Hamilton is what do you do in situation, to your point, where without question we're seeing these extreme storms more frequently? We have situations where people have had their basements flooded with sewage on a repetitive basis. What do we do? In Toronto we've taken this very aggressive approach but it is very costly.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Okay, thank you, Mr. McKay.
We're going to move now to our last question, to Mr. Shipley—we'll give him a chance to finish up on his previous question—for five minutes, please.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Mr. Chair, I can't believe it. I'm just visiting so it's really great.
Mr. Ullrich, I've really appreciated your involvement. We had to leave a couple of things hanging in terms of that coordination. I'm glad that you've talked so much about phosphorus also because it does go back—and I didn't get a chance to talk about the coordination between state and our provinces, particularly around agriculture, because much of that phosphorus gets shifted to agriculture, whether it's all from agriculture or not. But we have our part to do—and I farm.
I'm wondering what sort of coordination can you help bring to state and provinces. I may be a few years out now so I may be out of touch a bit but, I can tell you at that time—in my municipality and in our counties and then to the province—we had much stricter land management practices. Is there a coordination of that between the provinces and the states in terms of the joint committee?