Council votes to tear down green to fabricate green
On Monday, City Council voted 7 to 6 to approve rezoning which allows Epcor to industrialize and clutter up Edmonton’s river valley with 45,000 solar panels, to create a giant solar power plant.
Thank you to Councillors Cartmell, Dziadyk, Knack, McKeen, Nickel and Paquette who voted against it. Mayor Iveson and Councillors Banga, Caterina, Esslinger, Hamilton. Henderson and Walters voted for the proposal.
Graham Hicks summed it up best in a 2019 Edmonton Sun column stating, “All this, because council wanted Epcor to follow its The Way We Green environmental plan, that 10% of the power used in EPCOR’s Edmonton operations (electricity distribution, water treatment, water/sewage infrastructure) be produced from local, renewable energy sources.
Our river valley’s contemporary history is of the triumph of maintaining and developing pristine parkland over repeated attempts, by real estate developers, industry and organization to construct large facilities/buildings in the river valley.
Why make an exception for a solar farm? Multiple bylaws and policies are in place to ensure the river valley stays as pristine as possible. Some exemptions exist. Century-old river valley neighbourhoods have grandfather rights. Some industrial facilities – water and sewage treatment plants – have to be close to the river.
Here’s why Edmonton’s city council should not allow Epcor’s solar farm proposal.
The land in question was originally zoned to be river valley park for reasons still sound today … to stop further industrialization/development of the North Saskatchewan river valley.
The solar farm is totally unnecessary. The E.L. Smith Plant functions just fine on electricity now coming in on transmission wires. To meet sustainability “quotas”, EPCOR could easily purchase “green energy” from providers like Bullfrog Power, or from Capital Power’s Halkirk wind farm.
Why would city council willfully approve such industry in the river valley, with its visual pollution, in the guise of cleaning up atmospheric pollution? Sorry, but covering acres of parkland with solar panels constitutes an industrial use and would create an industrial look that’s the antithesis of an urban wilderness park.
To approve this project is to tolerate the gradual, incremental intrusion of non-park uses into the river valley. If EPCOR can change the zoning, how about all the property developers holding river valley land upstream from the Henday Bridge, patiently waiting for the day they too can get zoning exemptions?
There’s enough intrusion into the river valley as it is – golf courses, existing neighbourhoods, the Kinsmen Fieldhouse, the Convention Centre, water treatment facilities, transportation corridors and the spilling of downtown past the Chateau Lacombe into the downtown river valley.”
If you feel the same as Hicks, remember Edmontonians get to express their feelings on this decision in October 2021 city elections. Until then, you can thank or criticize your Councillor and the Mayor by emailing them at council@edmonton.ca
Should river valley be a national urban park
Under the Parks Canada Agency Act, the Minister invites Canadians to share their views and perspectives on the work of Parks Canada every two years. In 2020, the Minister’s Round Table will be held from October 8 to October 30 beginning with small discussion forums and concluding with a public consultation held from October 19 to 30.
The consultation’s five themes include urban parks, ecological corridors, and diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. In September, urban parks figured prominently in the federal government’s Speech from the Throne.
Our society supports that Parks Canada consider a number of options for playing an even greater role in urban conservation, including: creating a number of new national urban parks modelled on Toronto’s Rouge National Urban Park; and partnering with municipal and other governments to support the creation and/or management of new or existing urban parks. Imagine Edmonton's river valley as a national urban park!
Details on the themes and focuses of the 2020 Minister’s Round Table and information on how to share your views at https://www.letstalkparkscanada.ca/index.php
Smith Blackburn homestead conservation land
Edmonton and Area Land Trust announced the public opening of Smith Blackburn Homestead, a 73-acre land donated to the Trust in 2018 to honour the memory of Cec Blackburn. The land was homesteaded, lived on, and cared for by the women, men and children of the Averell and Smith families between 1903 and 1989.
Cec was a dedicated walker and community builder who would be pleased that people can come here to experience the inspiration, solace, and lessons of the natural environment. Three boardwalks have been installed on the land to allow access while protecting sensitive habitat, and now the land is ready for visitors.
The Smith Blackburn Homestead is in the Beaver Hills UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. With close proximity to Elk Island National Park, the Cooking-Lake Blackfoot Recreation Area, and Beaverhill Lake, it is part of a close network of conserved areas in this region, which provide a large area of connected habitats, wildlife corridors, and stepping stones for wildlife, in a region that is otherwise highly fragmented.
The Smith Blackburn Homestead is an additional piece to this mosaic of natural areas that provides homes for breeding waterfowl and songbirds, large mammals, carnivores, and plays an important overall role in maintaining biodiversity in this region. Information at https://www.ealt.ca/smith-blackburn
Hawrelak Park art garden celebrates community
There’s a new public art playground in Edmonton, and it’s built on a human scale, meant to be climbed all over — and very Instagrammable by design. What’s more, it’s an easy-to-fathom symbolic celebration of one of Edmonton’s greatest assets: community engagement.
The multi-station artwork was designed and fabricated by Alberta’s Heavy Industries and is part of a larger newly-designed public space on the south side of the Heritage Amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park, commissioned by the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL), in advance of Canada’s first community league program — ours — turning 100 next year.
The space includes a smartly designed plaza with covered semicircle roofs around a cylindrical stone fireplace, a nice echo of the historic Canada Packers Smoke Stack on Fort Road. Read more at https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/new-hawrelak-park-art-garden-celebrates-community-in-six-sculptures
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Sincerely yours,
Harvey Voogd
North Saskatchewan River Valley Conservation Society
780.691.1712
nsrivervalley@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/NSRVCS/
http://www.edmontonrivervalley.org/