Thanks to a Chronicle-Herald article, already today, two of my coworkers have excitedly related the news that the Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness has been saved. (One even twitted it).
Not so fast!
It’s true that the province has designated all the crown land in the area as official wilderness, giving it all the protections that go along with that—no mining, no road building, etc. And this is good news, if long expected.
But as I explained in my feature on BMBCL back in December, now that the province has moved forward with its wilderness protection, the real threat to the area lies with the potential development of private land far inside the wilderness area—there’s a big parcel, for example, just to the west of Quarry Lake.
If such lands are developed, the entire watershed will be as good as destroyed—we’d have moronic teenage suburbanites destroying the woods with ATVs, antifreeze and oil run off from SUVs flowing into the lakes and other abominations too disgusting to mention.
Whether such development happens depends entirely on the HRM. The regional plan designates the entire area, from ridgetop to ridgetop, as a city wilderness park, and if such designation becomes reality, I’ll celebrate the completed protection of the wilderness.
But we’re not there yet. First, the city has to purchase the private land in the area, and to do that, it must first put a value on that land. That, in turn, means somewhat perversely finding out how much it would cost to build roads all through the wilderness, and so we get this map of just that (very large PDF, see end of chapter 3), produced by the city planning department:
Most people would look at that map and say, “Hey! They want to build roads all through the wilderness!” But I’m assured this is just part of the normal valuation process. Still, there has been much behind-the-scenes lobbying by the landowners to get the land valued at the highest possible amount.
In the end, protection of BMBCL will only come when—and if—city council agrees to buy the private land. And we’re a long way from that.
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Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes wilderness threatened
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.
Most of that land is owned by the Armoyan family through the Armco & Kimberley Loyd companies. Armoyan is the biggesst private landowner in the metro area.
Maybe it’s just me and my naivete, but wouldn’t it be somewhat schizophrenic for HRM to designate the lands in question as being part of a city wilderness park, but value the land as if it’s going to be developed as residential? Point being, private land speculators own it, but if they can’t develop it what’s it really worth to them?
Large developers have to understand that part of the cost of doing business is that if they scoop up huge parcels of land just outside immediate growth areas, that this can potentially conflict with government land use strategies, to include parkland designations. Furthermore, they can’t be so ignorant as to think that there will be no green spaces, so a demand on their part that 100 percent of their land acquisitions will be recompensed as if it were all going to be developed is unreasonable.
If worst comes to worst, and city council buckles, I’d like to see at least one demand, and that’s for adequate public access to every lake in that area. This means plenty of lakefront parks (not wilderness parks per se), some boardwalks and shoreline trails, and naturally public boat access. Right now the state of most lakes in urban/suburban HRM with respect to public access is a joke. The public owns every lake we have, and every watercourse, and development effectively negates, or seriously diminishes, that public right. And for a refreshing change – it’ll never happen of course – maybe the city could demand 20-30m lakeshore green belts…as it stands right now people build right up to water’s edge, and then they piss and moan about why the lake is undergoing eutrophication…
I’d be really impressed if they do protect these areas. I used to camp out at Suzie’s lake as a teen and would hate to see the area developed. HRM needs less suburban sprawl which costs more for sewage/roads anyway and more high density housing on the peninsula à la Toronto/Vancouver condo/high rises. I’m planning on moving back to Halifax and would love to find a nice modern condo building with a gym/theatre/underground parking etc. on the peninsula but I don’t think there are any. Is there no money to be made in this kind of development in HRM?