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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain Wilderness development proposal subject of meeting

Posted by Tim Bousquet on Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 2:19 PM

Huge tracts of land now protected by the city's regional plan will be turned into sprawling subdivisions, if Nova Scotia's largest development companies get their way. The land in question comes in two chunks. The first is identified in the plan as part of the future Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain Wilderness Park, consisting of about 400 hectares of now privately held land. The second is about 600 hectares in the Port Wallis area off the 107 connector highway in Dartmouth. Both are designated "urban reserve" in the plan, which means city services required for development would not be extended to those areas for the 25-year lifetime of the plan.

The developers, however, have asked for that designation to be changed and, despite opposition from both environmentalists and downtown business groups, the city's Regional Plan Advisory Committee has been favourably processing the request all summer.

The committee will likely approve a recommendation at its meeting this Wednesday, 3-6pm in the Helen Creighton room of the Alderney Library in Dartmouth. That recommendation is to be forwarded to the full Halifax council.

When it's completed, the agenda for the meeting will be placed here.

Tags: Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain, Regional Plan

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Comments (3)

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Thanks Tim for following this important story. Halifax is not unique in letting a particular set of real estate, automotive, construction and oil and gas interests dictate land-use policy.

For example, Ottawa is currently set to bulldoze the South March Highlands, a designated "Natural Environment Area" featuring the highest level of ecological and biodiversity in the city-region, including 18 species at risk of going extinct. Similarly, two prominent developers were able to play to a suburban-dominated regional council and, like many road-related projects unfolding right now across Canada, use the Conservative stimulus fund deadline next year to justify shirking a full environmental assessment.

As a Port Wallace native (and lover of Shubie Park), I cringe when I hear comments such as those posted here by "Realist" who suggests we should politely bend over for the very particular set of private interests who reap enormous profit from automobile dependency and homogeneous housing tracts. On the contrary, from Toronto and Montreal to Vancouver we see more and more citizens calling out car-based sprawl for sustaining epidemic obesity, routinized violence and global climate change. What would Halifax look like, sound like, smell like if it gave up the private car as an organizing principle of city growth?

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Posted by No cars go! on August 15, 2010 at 5:30 PM

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Posted by No cars go! on August 15, 2010 at 5:29 PM

To avoid confusion, I might note that the original and current and official spelling of the Dartmouth community is Port Wallace. Having said that, any undeveloped land out behind the built up parts of that community is already a lost cause, and may as well be sacrificed. Won't be long before they do some expropriations to widen Caledonia Road, Breeze Drive, Montebello Road and part of Waverley Road though...you'll hear some screaming then.

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Posted by Realist in Dartmouth on August 5, 2010 at 4:24 PM

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