Conservationists fear fast-track housing development near Bedford could cause harm
Posted Apr 24, 2022 09:45:20 PM.
Conservationists are concerned that plans to accelerate housing development near Bedford will harm an ecologically diverse area full of old-growth trees and at-risk animal species.
Last month, Nova Scotia announced the Sandy Lake-Sackville River area would be one of nine locations that will see accelerated housing development.
It's a move the province is making to ensure the Halifax region — which it says is currently short at least 17,000 homes — can keep up with its booming population.
Across those nine locations, the province aims to build as many as 22,600 new residential units, with 6,000 of those being built in the Sandy Lake-Sackville River area near Bedford.
But a coalition of 27 community groups is currently trying to drive developers out of the area as it aims to expand a 404-hectare (1,000-acre) park.
Walter Regan — president of the Sackville Rivers Association, which is one of those groups in the coalition — says the group has been trying to expand the park to 1,133 hectares (2,800 acres) since 1971.
“Six-thousand units, if it's fully built out, could support 13,000 people, another 4,000 cars on Hammonds Plains Road,” Regan says. “But we would lose the 1,800 acres, and that's only a portion.”
Regan tells The Todd Veinotte Show that the area's an important wildlife corridor that connects the Chebucto Peninsula to the Sackville River for many animals.
“We have got to maintain this,” Regan says. “There's several large stands of old-growth [trees] back there, and there's only one per cent left in the entire province of old-growth, so they must be saved at all costs.”
Moreover, he says the coalition is also afraid the five-person task force — which was created last fall — will negatively hasten the municipal process for housing, skipping over things like sustainability.
On top of that, he says the task force might interfere with the Halifax Green Network Plan, a project approved in 2018 that features numerous benefits to protect various ecosystems.
Regan says the 1,800 acres the coalition is trying to save from development is currently home to 15 at-risk species, including mainland moose, black bears, various turtle species and the wild Atlantic salmon.
With those at-risk animal species and plants, Regan says the province is put in a conflict of interest since it must focus on improving housing but also protecting local endangered species.
“We just can't let it go ahead without full investigation,” he says. “We've been lobbying HRM to do a park boundary study, but they did it in such a rush they're not even going to recommend where the park boundary is.
“They really should go out there and walk the land. The more they walk the land, the more they're going to understand what a beautiful, beautiful area this is.”
Tim Outhit, deputy mayor and councillor for Bedford – Wentworth, says the municipality has been listening to the public and conducting a range of environmental studies to ensure the best outcome.
Outhit adds that he's working with developers, the province and municipal staff to ensure the development comes with improvements to Hammonds Plains Road and a “significant expansion” of the park in exchange for some housing density.
“At the end of the day, all indications are — from talking to the province, talking to the people on the panel, talking to our planning staff — that this will continue to be the process,” Outhit says. “We will see an expansion of the park, we will see protection of the waterways leading into it and we will see some upgrading of the Hammonds Plains Road.”
But after spending years fighting for conservation, Regan says there should be a balance of housing developments and nature.
“It's trees versus houses, and it shouldn't be trees versus houses,” Regan says. “It should be houses with trees. We've got to have environmental impact studies done for these large subdivisions … because we do not want to look 30 years out, 'That would've been a great area for a park.'”
