On September 5, 2013 the Alliance sent in six pages of comments to the proposed Official Plan Amendment tabled by staff on June 25. Staff will need to take these comments into account in its report to Planning Committee and Council in advance of the formal public meeting of October 22.
[Ed.:] The staff proposal is no longer available online.
Important supplementary documents were:
– the methodology staff employed to identify natural linkages. (Note: Here is the final version of this paper [4 MB] tabled for the November 26 meeting of Council)
– a paper analyzing the status and options for designation of mineral aggregates
In forwarding our comments to the members of Council, we highlighted these points:
Among General Comments:
Access to Ottawa’s Official Plan remains a significant irritant. We wonder if the unavailability of a colour-printed and bound copy of the current Plan is in conformity with Provincial access regulations. On the web site, there is no statement, as one would expect on legal text sites, regarding the most recent Amendment that has been incorporated. There is no PDF of the whole document, making searches extremely cumbersome.
On country lot subdivisions:
We support the prohibition of new country lot subdivisions (section. 3.7.2, policy 8, p3-42), and the increase of lot severances by 1 (to a total of 3) provided a minimum of 10 ha remains agricultural land. However, why does this policy reference only General Rural Areas and not Rural Natural Features as well? It should reference both.
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The City will be in good company when it finally puts a stop to this form of rural sprawl: We understand that the Region of Waterloo, Halton Region, Hamilton, Essex, Peel, York, Durham, Oxford County, Mississippi Mills, Sudbury, Huron County, Durham, Peel, the Town of Mono, Kawartha Lakes, Port Hope, Deep River, East Luther Grand Valley and Shelburne all, in one way or another, prohibit country lot subdivisions.
On Rural Natural Features:
A policy should be added to section 3.2.4 (p3-9) requiring provision of an RNF overlay in the geoOttawa maps, e.g. under Planning. RNFs are too “invisible.” It would benefit all interested parties, when they consult a zoning map, to immediately see where there is an RNF so that they become aware of the consequences such as the requirement for an Environmental Impact Statement.
For the same reason, if they aren’t already, RNFs should be included on Schedules L1/2/3, given that the purpose of these Schedules is to serve as a trigger for an EIS requirement.
On the definition of Significant Woodland:
We suggest that it is feasible and practical to draw upon the [Natural Heritage Reference] Manual’s Uncommon Characteristics criteria in order to more fully recognize woodlands as significant. We propose that the policy read as follows:
(c) Significant woodlands defined in the rural area as woodlands that combine all three two out of four features listed below in a contiguous, forested area:
(i) Mature stands of trees 80 years of age or older;
(ii) Interior forest habitat located more than 100 m inside the edge of a forest patch; and
(iii) Woodland adjacent to a surface water feature such as a river, stream, drain, pond or wetland, or any groundwater feature including springs, seepage areas, or areas of groundwater upwelling;
(iv) Uncommon characteristics such as a unique species composition, a vegetation community with a provincial ranking of S1, S2 or S3 (as ranked by the NHIC); habitat of a rare, uncommon or restricted woodland plant species; or species existing in only a limited number of sites within the planning area.
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Staff provides detailed answers to our comments
Following submission of our comments on September 5, we had a helpful meeting with staff on September 18 and on October 1 we received detailed written responses. They are here.