Bonjour madame la Présidente, madame la Conseillère, et messieurs les Conseillers. My name is Jon Legg, and my comments, on behalf of Action Sandy Hill, will be general, and will last 5 to 6 minutes.
Sandy Hill, just next door to Lower Town, has a common interest in King Edward Avenue. Accordingly, Action Sandy Hill had a representative on the Public Advisory Committee for the Environmental Assessment for the King Edward Renewal project.
We in Sandy Hill sympathize with those who live in the community of Lower Town that has been split by the King Edward throughway. We realize that this study -- although it does go some way to improving the lives of pedestrians and cyclists-- does not really help the community of Lower Town as much as a bridge to the East of Ottawa would help.
There are a number of lessons to be learned from this latest Environmental Assessment; I will concentrate only on two. And, both these lessons apply directly to a larger and probably more controversial EA that is now underway, that of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, which will be brought to this Committee in the coming months.
The first lesson has to do with the well-known conflict between road traffic and the communities it goes through, and the second has to do with some of the principles behind the Environmental Assessments as the City now carries them out.
Regarding the first lesson, it appears that the Consultant and the City staff have done the best they could do in the circumstances, but the main community involved, Lower Town, has not won any clear victory here. The main hope of the residents of both parts of now-divided Lower Town lies in the construction of a new bridge to the East of Ottawa that will allow most of the trucks and a lot of the cars to bypass the City completely. However, whether the community will ever really recover from the King Edward Throughway is doubtful.
Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that one should never allow another expressway to be built through a community, because once it has been built, it is pretty well impossible to unbuild it.
And yet, it is too simplistic to view things in terms of win or lose, when – I am convinced – both the drivers and the residents of communities lose when another road is built through ANY community in Ottawa. The common element to all drivers and all Ottawa residents is the air we breathe.
In doing some research for the Alta Vista Corridor EA, I was given some statistics about air quality that apply to the situation of not only Lower Town, but to ALL residents of Ottawa.
I asked the head office of the Ontario Medical Association, if the OMA’s computer model could break down what part of the total cost to Ontario from pollution would apply to Ottawa. You may be aware that recently, there has been some doubt cast on some air pollution computer models. What you should know is that the OMA’s software has been found to be rock solid.
We all know that most of Ottawa’s pollution is from cars and trucks, but I wanted to know if the OMA could estimate what the cost is of what the King Edwards and the Queensways are doing to us. The answer? For 2002, 218 million dollars and 32 premature deaths, for a start.
I say, “for a start”, because the toll of death and so-called “minor illnesses” are considered separately. For example, there will be 147,000 “asthma-symptom days” in Ottawa this year, and over 100, 000 of them will be experienced by youth between 0 and 17 years of age. The cost to the economy of these so-called “minor illnesses” is now being calculated, so it is not available at this time. But whatever you feel about the cost in dollars, I am sure you must agree with me that the cost in human lives and illness is too high.
So, the first lesson I would draw from the King Edward EA is that any major artery which allows cars and trucks to spew their pollution into our city’s air represents a significant cost to all residents of Ottawa. And that cost is one that can be avoided. Not to do so would be unconscionable.
The second lesson I would like to draw from this EA is that I believe that you may wish to examine an important part of the EA process to ensure that it meets with your approval. When I told a member of the Lower Town Community Association that I might raise this question, he warned me not to go into detail because, he said, Councillors do not have time for the details.
I believe he is right, so I will stick to the principles only. You do not, in my opinion, need to make a decision on this question at this time. But I believe that you should know that a part of the King Edward EA, and all of the Alta Vista Corridor EA were and are being conducted under the same process.
As part of the process, several alternatives are defined, and a method is devised to select which of these alternatives will be the one that is the “preferred alternative”. This “preferred alternative” is then recommended to you, Councillors of this Committee, for your comments and/or approval.
How this “preferred alternative” is chosen is done by evaluating each of them against certain criteria. To further assist in this selection process, a weighting is given to each of these “evaluation criteria”. There was a slide in Mr. Jack’s presentation that showed the evaluation criteria for the King Edward project.
For example, whether it is for the King Edward EA or another EA, if the capital cost is one of the criteria, and it is given, let’s say, a very high weighting, then cost will be a determining factor in selecting the “preferred alternative”.
It follows therefore, that if one representative or group can have a large influence over the selection and weighting of the evaluation criteria, one will also have a large influence over which alternative will be chosen.
With that explanation as background, I should say that it has been a shock to many community association representatives to learn than the Public Advisory Committee only has one third of the influence in selecting the weighting of each criterion. The Technical Advisory Committee also has a third of the influence, and the Consultant has the last third of the influence. The result of this process is that solutions are being chosen, not by the public who will have to live with the choice and not by accountable politicians, but rather by a combination of city employees and a paid consultant.
I understand that this has been the practice in many recent EAs.
I would be happy to go into more detail, but I think it may be more appropriate to simply flag this issue for you at this time, because I suspect that it will cause many problems in the case of the Alta Vista Corridor EA. I think that you will be hearing a lot more about this matter in the months ahead.
Thank you for your attention.