Municipality sees Draft Screening Report as Positive Reinforcement

Response to the draft screening report regarding expansion of the Stanhope Airport is vastly different depending on which side of the issue the respondents favour. Algonquin Highlands reeve Eleanor Harrison believes the report reinforces the municipality’s contention that the expansion at the airport is environmentally responsible. “Most of the mitigation measures that are referred to in the screening report the contractor would have been doing anyway and it’s certainly indicating to us that the environmental studies that were done during the planning process were sufficient to meet the Canadian Environmental Assessment Review Board,” Harrison said. “I don’t see anything in the report to stop us,” she said, adding that the comment is her own assessment and that council will be meeting with its engineer to discuss the report at the June 17 meeting of council. “That’s the way I’m looking at it,” she said. “It looks like a fairly good report as far as the township is concerned. It looks like we have all our ducks in order and we’re ready to proceed. That’s the way it reads to me.” The contractor for the project has been hired and has been on stand-by waiting for the council’s go-ahead. Harrison said that there were two options regarding the construction. If the new runway part of the project is delayed, the renovations to the existing runway would be done first. If the township gets the green light, both the renovations and the construction of the new runway would proceed together, which would save the expense of tearing up some of the newly rehabilitated existing runway to build the new runway. Harrison said it now appears as though construction and renovations will be allowed to proceed at the same time. “The full project is in the budget so I’m quite certain that’s what will happen,” Harrison said. Harrison noted that construction of a new runway would not be started until at least mid July to avoid disturbing any nesting birds that may be on the site. “I doubt that the contractor would be mobilized much ahead of that anyway,” she said. Harrison acknowledged that there are other matters the council has to make decisions about, such as securing aerial easements with adjacent property owners. “We do have some aerial easements [to obtain] and they will be discussed on Thursday,’ Harrison said on Monday evening. She said those easements were discussed last year with three adjacent property owners. “We have looked into it. We have done some work on it but it was put on hold because if the Environmental Assessment Review Board had come back and said ‘you can’t build a new runway there’ there wasn’t much point in spending unnecessary money.” She said the municipality will now revisit those negotiations. The draft screening report allows some time for public consultation. Harrison said she believes the environmental concerns have been addressed and she speculated that opponents of the new runway project would have to present new arguments to reopen the debate or initiate further study of the situation. Harrison said she expects a considerable amount of discussion with the municipality’s engineer regarding what steps need to be taken next. The Opposing View Opponents of the new runway project at the Stanhope Airport contend that the draft screening report fails to address all of the issues associated with the proposed expansion and construction of a second runway. “The draft report is insufficient in scope and does not present a valid assessment,” said Andy Muirhead, vice president of the Maple, Beech and Cameron Lakes Property Owners Association. “We’ll be complaining loudly about it. “Basically, the responsible authority doing the assessment chose, for whatever reason, to ignore our rather detailed submissions on the areas off the airport property itself which will be affected by tree cutting and noise and things like that. They mainly restricted their assessment to impacts within the property itself with insufficient regard to areas outside the property.” Muirhead said it is a project that has a lifespan of about 50 years, which means impacts to areas off the airport property will be continual throughout that lifespan. “There’s a complete failure to actually identify the extent of the areas and the impact off the property boundaries. They haven’t done any on-theground, off-property survey so it’s impossible for them to assess what the impacts will be.” He said that was part of the Environmental Assessment Review Board’s mandate. Muirhead said it is customary to give those who want to comment a period of 30 to 45 days to respond. In this case, the public will have only 11 working days to respond, a period which Muirhead protests is not long enough, especially given the fact that a large percentage of the local property owners don’t live in the area full time. “From the beginning of the process with the assessment it’s been recognized that it’s a bit of a special case here in that about 80 per cent of the people who own property here don’t actually live here all the time,” he said. “We’ve been given, up until this point, a certain amount of leeway because of that. It takes a while to get the information out and to get people to respond. We’ve noted that and we will be lodging our displeasure.” A final screening report will be required, Muirhead said, before any construction can begin on a new runway. “They can’t start anything until this whole thing is signed off and we’re certainly hoping that our comments with regard to the insufficiency of the assessment will be taken seriously and that will mean a bit more time before they get a signed copy in their hands,” he said. He added that even if the opponents were ignored completely, it will be at least a month or more before the municipality would get anything in writing from the Environmental Assessment Agency. He noted that the property owners’ association has contingency plans if the agency does ignore the association’s arguments. Among the options being considered is consultation with the Ontario ombudsman and/or insisting the assessment be referred to a mediator or review panel, pursuant to Sections 20 and 29 of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Muirhead has prepared an extensive seven-plus page response to the draft screening report, in which he details the areas which he feels were not adequately addressed by the Environmental Assessment Review Board. Another area of concern which Muirhead says he believes the review board failed to take into consideration is the potential impact on the environment and the neighbouring property owners that future phases of the airport expansion would create. The effect on wildlife is another area Muirhead believes was inadequately studied. He says less than two days of “on the ground” study was conducted in June and July, which was “insufficient and ill timed to properly assess numbers of large mammals frequenting the property and the area in general.” He says consultation with local residents would have confirmed that the area has become a refuge and feeding ground for deer and moose and that deer and black bears are frequently observed, especially during the spring and fall. “At the minimum, wildlife control/exclusion fencing must be emplaced to mitigate hazards to both wildlife and aircraft safety,” he said. “This measure was recommended by consultants and was a part of the original design and budget for the expansion and appears to have been dropped for purely economic reasons.” Muirhead said the issue of aerial easement agreements with adjacent property owners was not addressed in the report. He said the initial offers to these landowners did not reflect the real cost to the property owners in terms of safety and enjoyment of their property. “We consider that fiscally irresponsible,” Muirhead said. “The settlement [with the Middleton family] put a fair price on the property.” He added that the municipality faces the same thing on a smaller scale a dozen times over in regard to aerial easements. The goal of the Maple, Beech and Cameron Lakes Property Owners Association has been, from the beginning, to stop the construction of a second runway. “It was never the intent to close the airport,” Muirhead said. “It’s a perfectly nice little airport.” Muirhead’s response to the draft screening report has been circulated to the executive of the local property owners association as well as several other property owners’ associations in Haliburton County that have been supportive in the past. His response will be submitted to the review board, along with endorsements, no later than Monday. Individual property owners will also be encouraged to voice their concerns before the deadline of June 25