Bedford residents are looking down the barrel of two mega-projects that are anti-ecological, anti-community and will do little for culture—unless you consider shopping avant garde. If all goes as planned, the Bedford Basin near the Bedford Highway Sobeys and the western shore of Papermill Lake will be peppered with condos and strip malls.
Amenities and residences aren’t the problem, though. I’m all for the hub approach—making communities like Sackville and Bedford as autonomous as possible to minimize commuting and endless highway building. But both these proposals will do great harm to wilderness and water, with little payback for locals.
HRM and Waterfront Development Corporation (a provincial Crown corporation) have been working together since 2007 to plan a 20-hectare development focused on high-end retail and high-tower condos (with over and underground parking) right on the Bedford Basin—literally, on it.
“A small city for 6,500 people is what they’re proposing, with shops and a hotel,” Mark Currie tells me. He grew up in Bedford and takes his 11-year-old son to explore the beaches, reef and tidal pools. He shot a gorgeous YouTube video of the aquatic life and birds, called “Bedford Waterfront Development.” “They say the project’s infancy goes back to the mid-’80s, when the Bedford Waterfront Development Corporation proposed a marine park. So how did it become condos?”
Since the early ’90s, WDCL has been collecting tipping fees as private companies from across the Maritimes infill the basin with construction rubble. What used to be Crosby’s Island, a haven for migratory birds, is now more of a peninsula. “They filled it right to the northern edge,” Currie says. “You can walk to it. The only natural shoreline left is the southern edge.”
The plan has suffered no ecological scrutiny whatsoever. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans won’t touch it, though it’s well within their powers to do so. The area is heavily fished for lobsters and is an important habitat for numerous species of fish, seals and whales. But because DFO has looked the other way, no environmental assessment, and no opportunity for genuine public input, has been triggered.
In a public presentation about the project WDCL staff acknowledged that there was no real business case for the project on its own, but they went ahead when they realized there was money in letting companies dump pyrhitic slate—an environmental nightmare— in freshwater. Its full impacts on seawater remain to be seen, but what is clear is that dumping any kind of rubble onto a living shore is problematic.
“The first confirmed sighting of migratory sandpipers happened here,” Currie says. Culturally, pre-contact Mi’kmaq petroglyphs have already been found in the area, yet when Currie asked if he could see the archeological assessment at a public presentation, he got blank stares.
The same can be said of development company United Gulf’s new 9.3-hectare project on the western side of Papermill Lake. Plans include a hotel, residential high-towers, low-rise condos and an urban streetscape. The new road will connect to exit 3, where the 102 and Hammonds Plains Road merge, creating a potential traffic nightmare at an already busy juncture.
Resident Terry Choyce is worried about its impact on the land she loves. “I am concerned that the holding ponds which will be dug to hold the road and parking drainage will be inadequate,” she says, “and it’ll pollute the lake.”
This initial project will open the door for a much larger—sprawling, even—housing development along the lake. So much for density. If United Gulf gets the zoning change (from commercial to mixed-use) it wants, construction could start next month.
No one has considered this for protection, yet it is an untouched wilderness, replete with massive hemlock trees. Ironically, as those trees come down HRM will be drafting its Urban Forest Master Plan to “ensure a sustainable future for our urban forest.”
There are some positives mentioned in these plans—allusions to green spaces and walkability—but like HRM By Design before them, they are all pie-in-the-sky, with vague half-commitments like “at some point in the future the potential for commuter rail” and “potentially two ferries in the future.” These features are imaginary. The infilling and deforestation are real and immediate.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.
Whether it is an Airport Authority, or the Waterfront Development Ltd., once created they go on forever. They have a guaranteed income and they will always keep looking for something to spend it on – be it another runway upgrade, parking garage, a scheme on the Dartmouth waterfront, or a massive Bedford scheme. Let me predict that with the the Switzer and Irving tugs’ none-competition agreement that has seen Switzer get all of Port Hawksbury and Irving get all of Halifax that the waterlot area to the east of ‘Block M’ will miraculously end up purchased by the Province for the WDC and that there will a very convenient landfill site for all the debris that will generated from the projected demolition of the Roy building and every other heritage that we can get a backhoe claw into.
Tugboat Sally
Those interested on learning about the toxic effects of pyrhitic slate on fresh water marine organisms should read this government document .
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/nhns/t1…
The area where this was dumped in Bedford Basin is in the outflow from Papermill lake which is fed from higher terrain surrounding it.
There are also watershed areas flowing thru the Bedford South development finding there way into this general area and including possibly the storm drainage system??
The sewage treatment plant empties its contribution (mnius the lumps) on a continual basis.
The Sackville river empties into the basin and flows on its way to wherever by this area as does a small brook in the Shore drive area.
….and add to this the fact that rainfall/snowmelt/Sobeys parking lot runoff /etc all add fresh water to the pile constantly.(not forgetting the air pollution interaction from the northeastern US)
This area is a natural cove jutting into the basin.
The slate was not placed into an impermeable casement surround and as it is all large rock one can assume that under/within it all is a “pond” of stagnant freash water.
This was delivered in the beginning “with our complements” (and much fossil fuel burning emissions) from the Sobey’s development in Fall River.
…curiously somebody didn’t notice all this when signing the taxpayer funded cheques???
Great — so, instead of having a high-density, sustainable development to repurpose toxic land sandwiched between a toxic highway and a toxic harbour, all this irrational hipster balking over the plan is going to have it cancelled and development will instead continue to occur in the form of low-density sprawl on untouched forest at the city’s edge. Real sustainable.
The “small city” Bedford waterfront plan is perfect for the site. Of course they use phrases like “the potential for commuter rail” — this sort of population density is what lays the groundwork for financial viability of rail transit. What’s your alternative for the site? Whatever it is, transit is sure to flounder without people living here along an existing rail right-of-way.
Phenomenally stupid article. It’s spelled “pyritic”, by the way.
Sorry, that was a bit harsh upon re-reading (blame LTTWB for setting the tone) — but really, what IS the alternative? In my eyes, high-density development like this is the most environmentally responsible type there is, realistically speaking.
See: Tim Bousquet’s article.
We are poor. Stop trying to sell condos, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand the myth of homeownership in North America. We have a much higher rate of home owning than most other developed countries. All we need is affordable housing, stop trying to make it so fancy.