On May 20, 2009 the Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital and the Sierra Club Canada filed an application with the Environmental Review Tribunal for Leave to Appeal a 10-year Permit To Take Water issued on April 27, 2009.

They also filed a Motion for an Interim Stay. (Supporting the Motion was an Affidavit sworn by Erwin Dreessen – 497 KB.) That motion was denied because the Tribunal concluded it had no authority to order an interim stay.

The Ministry, as part of its Response to the Leave application, filed Affidavits by provincial officials: Peter Taylor (460 KB; Mr. Taylor issued the Permit), MOE hydrogeologist Robert Putzlocher (560 KB), MOE surface water specialist Dana Cruickshank (352 KB), and MNR ecologist Shaun Thompson (408 KB)

(As part of the Reply to the other parties’ Responses, an Affidavit sworn by Albert Dugal (309 KB) was filed. The Tribunal decided to expunge this Affidavit as it exceeded the limits of what can be supplied as part of a Reply.)

On July 29, 2009 the Tribunal decided to grant Leave to appeal on three grounds:

1. the taking of surface water from Miscellaneous Ponded Areas;
2. the removal of trigger elevations from a well monitoring location outside the “protected” wetland; and
3. Condition 4.8 of the Permit — a catch-all condition about monitoring adverse effects over and above other Conditions imposed.

The Alliance and the Sierra Club then filed their appeal on these three grounds.

Further submissions regarding the scope of the normally automatic Stay of the Permit followed. On August 28, 2009 the Tribunal decided to what extent the Stay of the Permit is in effect.

All ERT Decisions and Orders regarding this appeal can be accessed from http://www.ert.gov.on.ca/english/decisions/index.htm – click on ERT Decisions and Orders, click Go and scroll down to a link showing “09-031”; this leads to a page with the list of all relevant decisions in PDF.

E.D.
29 August 2009