On March 31, 2011 Part II Order requesters received the Minister’s reply. All requests were denied but three conditions were imposed on the City:
1: The City and KWOG shall implement all commitments made in their letter of October 15, 2009:
+ Additional Stormwater Management (SWM) Runoff Volume Controls and Widening of
Planned Restoration Corridor;
+ Municipal Planning Controls Regarding Floodplain Management;
+ SWM Model Validation and Contingency Plan;
+ Water Level and Flow Rate Monitoring Plan;
+ Development Phasing Plan, Restoration Project Phasing and Interim Development;
+ Kanata West Overall Monitoring Plan and Report;
+ Climate Change Adaptation.
2: The City and KWOG shall not proceed with implementing SWM Ponds 1, 2 or and associated storm sewers until such time as the City and KWOG have calibrated and validated the SWM models for the Upper Carp River watershed and prepared the associated Model Validation Report (as required by Condition 1 above).
3: In the event that the Model Validation Report identifies significant differences between the observed and simulated results that cannot be rationalized, the City and KWOG will implement the Contingency Plan (as required by Condition l above) and re-evaluate and determine the impact these changes may have on the KWMSS and the Restoration Plan.
“With this decision having been made,” the letter concludes, “the City and KWOG may now proceed with the seven projects, subject to the conditions I have imposed and any other permits or approvals required.”
Here is the Minister’s Decision letter to the City, and here are the replies to the former members of the Coalition and others; to Paul Renaud; and to Darlene Conway.
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In February 2010 “somebody” had filed an access-to-information request with the City for “All records, including correspondence, emails, meeting notes and reports, related to the Third Party Review of the Carp River restoration and related projects, from and including the time of awarding of the consultant contract until and including June 2009.” Because third party interests were involved who contested and appealed release, there were long delays in getting any information and the matter ended up being painstakingly adjudicated by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. Three years later, in February 2013, the Commissioner issued an Order for release and the following month the requester received a boxfull of records.
Among them was a January 2009 email from AECOM’s engineer saying:
“we have adjusted friction coefficients for bridges and culverts to address sites where water levels are critical to eliminate impacts to 417 — d/s of Richardson, the coefficients at the Richardson culvert has been adjusted to 0.4 to minimize downstream impacts…”
I.e., the model appears to have been manipulated to avoid unwanted results. This incriminating information was duly reported by David Reevely in the Ottawa Citizen of May 14, 2013. He quotes the City’s manager of this file as saying in response that these figures were rejected before anything was done with them — difficult to believe because it is the very same manipulation of the Third Party Review’s “model of record” that was exposed by Darlene Conway earlier.
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Finally, from our 2012-2013 Annual Report:
“Carp River Restoration
… Planning Committee on June 26 [2012] considered a Zoning and Official Plan amendment. The last page of the staff report provided the following consultation details: “Four comments were received”. Neither the comments nor the staff responses were made available. Considering this continued stonewalling by staff and consultants, and that appeals require planning grounds — technical reasons not being sufficient — it was decided not to take further action.”
Citizens, backed up by solid professional analysis, had spent thousands of hours trying to put the Carp River restoration and Kanata West development on the right path. They did not succeed.