A wilderness jewel just 15 minutes from downtown Halifax has been spared from development, at least for a few years. At issue is the Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain wilderness area, which has been designated as a future regional wilderness park in the HRM Regional Plan (see here). I’ve explained the development pressures on the privately […]
Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain
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Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain Wilderness development proposal subject of meeting
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 […]
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Provincial authorities refuse to intervene in wilderness debate
Provincial authorities have sent a clear message about their priorities: They’ll intervene in city affairs to frustrate transit improvement, but when it comes to the city approving the bulldozing of 2,000 acres of wilderness, hey, no problem. Last month, premier Darrell Dexter expressed “concerns” with HRM’s plans for the expanded Bridge Terminal, an important link […]
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Birch Cove Lakes-Blue Mountain wilderness threatened by development
A high-powered and high-dollared political battle in City Hall is playing out largely unnoticed by local media. At stake are potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in suburban development and the future of a proposed wilderness park celebrated as an unparallelled urban gem by environmentalists. Over the past few years wilderness advocates have successfully convinced […]
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Suburban homes proposed for park
If Halifax’s most politically connected developers get their way, land within the city’s proposed Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lake Wilderness Park will instead get developed as suburban neighbourhoods. The land in question is 500 acres west of the Bicentennial Highway, owned by four groups—Annapolis Group, Armco Capital, Gateway Materials and Sisters of Charity. The largest of […]
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Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes wilderness threatened
A group of four landowners is pushing for land designated as part of the Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes wilderness park to be re-zoned for residential housing and apartments. The proposed park is a chunk of land the size of the Halifax peninsula, stretching from the Bayers Lake Industrial Park to Hammonds Plains. It includes a […]
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Blue Mountain-Birch Coves Lake: not saved!
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 […]
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Into the wild Blue Mountain
It’s hard to believe this place exists at all, really. But sure enough, I can locate it on a topographic map nailed to my office wall: a chunk of land about the size of the Halifax peninsula, which is on the same map. In this area, however, the topo map shows no roads, no black […]