While an application to take water over the next ten years is still pending, the developers of Findlay Creek Village have filed yet another short-term application, so they may dig a deep trench to start the final major phase of their development.

The application was posted on the EBR web site under EBR # 010-5426.

Here is a Site Plan, showing the trench the developer wishes to dig (the red line labeled ‘Service Trench’). And here is the estimated Area of Influence resulting from the proposed water taking.

The Alliance, through the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic at uOttawa, filed comments, supported by a report by Dr. G. Clarke Topp.

Our comments note that this is in effect an application to extend a Permit which expired on September 30, 2008. This is the Permit for which we had sought leave to appeal. But we agreed later (after having suffered numerous delays caused by the Permit holder) that the matter had become moot. That consent was based on Ministry undertakings that, except on demand from other agencies, no further short-term permits would be issued. In our view, therefore, this application constitutes contempt of the Tribunal. It simply aims to maintain the developer’s construction schedule.

On the substance, Dr. Topp’s report demonstrates again that Golder’s data and analysis are unreliable.

We also refute as spurious the claim that this work is needed to meet the expectations of the residents for parkland.