Huntsville mayoral candidates field questions from the Mary Lake Association

The Mary Lake Association recently asked the Huntsville mayoral candidates to supply written answers outlining their comments and proposed plan of action on what the Association deemed to be three important environmental issues. The candidates were also asked which issue they think is most important.

The issues are:
The Golden Pheasant, Mountview waste water treatment capacity
Algae blooms
Managing urban and rural development

Scott Aitchison – Every one of the three issues raised by the Mary Lake Association are critically important to the health and the vitality of our community. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation because they are interconnected.

Scott Aitchison – Waste Water Treatment
The work to close the outdated Mountview Wastewater Treatment facility is happening now. The construction of the Golden Pheasant Wastewater Treatment facility in 1996 was the first step. It was designed for expansion and upgrades to facilitate the expansion are in progress. A report on the current work happening can be found here: Report PW 8-2017-16 The full closure of the Mountview facility will ultimately cost approximately $40 million, but it must be completed. To that end, I have worked with District of Muskoka staff and the District Chair Klink to meet with Provincial Cabinet Ministers including the Minister of Infrastructure to get support for large important projects like ours. As with the current project underway, we are working to complete parts of the total project when the funds are available, and we will continue to work to get it done. For a full explanation of the project read: Environmental Study Report, Mountview Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Peggy Peterson – Thank you for the opportunity to address these important issues. I believe that all human activity has an impact on the natural environment and that it is our obligation as individuals, as communities and as governments to live in balance with our surroundings. We can only do this by individual stewardship, community awareness and municipal laws. We must vigilant as citizens and leaders to ensure our municipal policies and tools are working to achieve that balance.

Peggy Peterson – Waste Water Treatment
The District of Muskoka has control of water and sewage treatment however the issues relate directly to the environmental impacts on lands and water that pass through all the Municipalities, beginning with Huntsville. I have lived in the area for over fifty years and I live near the old Mount View WWTP and so I have been a witness to the impact on air quality in the downtown and water quality in the Federally Protected Muskoka River from this old system. I have been researching this issue since your association asked the question and I have found it rather frustrating to source since the most current information showed the newer WWTP at Golden Pheasant was at capacity in 2016 according to District. We do rely on local media to keep us approved so when I could find nothing current, so I made deeper enquiries and I have good news.
I was able to speak directly to District Chair John Klinck last Thursday in Huntsville and when I asked about the status he had an important update that will be made public soon. The new numbers about capacity at Golden Pheasant are good and indicate room for growth for the next twenty years and 36 % space in capacity after the current plans in play for the Town of Huntsville. So, the expansion numbers will support the unprecedented development of Deerhurst and Grandview although at the time these were passed without this information. I find this interesting and this is the kind of activity I have witnessed too often with Council of the past. If Capacity was challenged, we would have lost growth capacity for the off waterfront urban housing that we all know we need. The province is clear about preferring construction in urban centers on water and sewer services.
I also asked about the Mount View site and it will be decommissioned as a treatment facility and will be come a pumping station only and will redirect effluent to Golden Pheasant for treatment. This is great and means there will be no more effluent exposed to the Muskoka River at Mount view and proper vapour hazard issues can be addressed in the new system and the land can hopefully be partially created s greenfield and safe brownfield. We know there have been two leaks of effluent near the Pumping Station near Rogers Cove on Fairy Lake and that issue has not yet been solved but it is being taken very seriously at District Public Works. There is a large expansion of Rogers Cove approved for the waterfront at this site, so this will have to be sorted before that goes online to ensure those shorelines are protected. We have a serious responsibility to ensure we do no harm to the pristine watershed as these as they pass through Huntsville.
Mary Lake Association members will be interested that I will also be bringing back to the table the testing of the lands and waters around and within the old Tannery Site upriver of Downtown Huntsville. This has been an issue for many years and at table again in Huntsville twelve years ago and nothing has ever come from our constant requests for proper testing. Many are not aware that when the company went bankrupt in 1951 and closed they systemically buried the dangerous chemicals from their operation is concrete vats in the ground on the edge of the Muskoka River. and even though Huntsville still has the environmental liability for these lands we have never been able to bring any attention to this critical issue. I will be asking for the town to insist and find funding for proper core testing of these, ands and the river bed.
The watershed and shoreline are the most important natural assets of a tourism and cottage-based economy and I sense that we have been “resourcing “the beauty and the ecology for profit to the point where we are compromising the very thing that we depend on for our health and prosperity.

Scott Aitchison – Algae blooms
Protecting the water in Muskoka is of paramount importance. At both the local and district level we have established rules around waterfront development, invested in tertiary level wastewater treatment facilities and continually monitor water quality all over Muskoka.
The planning tools we use to manage development and protect water quality include:
– Site plan approval for all waterfront development (registered on title)
– Huntsville Official Plan policies limiting waterfront activity areas, requirements for protection of and or revegetation of waterfront zones, limits on minimum lot sizes and frontage etc.
– Muskoka Official Plan policies designed to protect water quality and to remediate problem areas, promotion of partnerships and stewardship programs etc. • The District of Muskoka Water Quality Model and Lake System Health Program.
As with any policy, we must follow the plan and we must regularly review the policies to ensure that they are achieving the objectives for which they were written. To that end, the Town of Huntsville is currently engaged in a review and update of the Huntsville Official Plan. As part of the review and update, there are public meetings and engagement with lake associations and interested residents.

Peggy Peterson – Algae blooms
Humans have been compromising the Muskoka West Algonquin Watershed for over one hundred years and the legacy of chemical contaminants for the two very large Tanneries on the Muskoka River have obviously done reversable harm and created a likely a toxic over load that has slowly travelled down the river. The Huntsville site was above the community at the end of Hunters Bay and the Bracebridge Tannery was placed below the community and both sites have buildings now but in Huntsville the Town still holds the environmental liability for these lands from the bankruptcy of the company back in 1951.
The question you ask is about Blue Green Algae and others man made perils to healthy water is directly related to this early contamination. There has been no political interest in getting proper testing of these lands and a full inspection of the status as the over 43 concrete tombs that will buried in the land beside the Federally Protected Muskoka River. This issue should have the attention of everyone including our MP and all the Mayors since Huntsville is up river from everyone in Muskoka. I will do everything I can to get these tests done so we know what the issues are and whether we need to do anything to remediate before there is a catastrophe.
So rather than extoll to you the facts of Blue Green algae I will direct you to the information produced by the local Medical Officer of Health regarding this man-made toxin and its very real health impacts on people, animals and the biosphere in general. I am going to tell you a personal story about the health impacts of the varieties and variations of Blue Green Algae and the real health risks.
Many of you may know me and many know of me because of me dedication to the protection of the Muskoka Water at the Bala Falls and my occupation of the Traditional Wahta Mohawks Portage in the fall of 2014. I am a recognised water protector and have been actively protecting this watershed for decades and because of this experience I was called there to help.
On July 31, 2015, I arrived on site around 9 am to find a large layering of foam on the beach on Turtle Island in Bala and my camp and the air smelling of an organic chemical. I was careful to report this strange foam and I did not come directly in contact with it and kept my dog from going into the strange foam. I waited for an hour for authority to arrive and proceeded to use a steel l shovel to move the foam itself onto the dry land, so it could be tested and removed.
I became unwell and the authorities from the Township of Muskoka Lakes that did come out but did not speak to me directly and I became increasing unwell and had to go home. I was so unwell I thought I had a flu and so I got home and started to manage some strange symptoms and the inability to keep food and fluids down and then I realized that my dog was also very sick, so I knew it was the foam.
I contacted the Ministry of Environment Hotline and they affirmed there were serious outbreaks of Blue Green Algae blooms in Muskoka watershed that day in August and specifically in Lake Muskoka. I remember her comment that one bay in Lake Muskoka had gone from green to blue overnight and the blooms were re aerating in the falls and I had toxic poisoning. I was very ill and experienced neurotoxic symptoms that require over a month of recovery and detoxing. My symptoms had gotten to the point of organ pain before we had a diagnosis and thank goodness I have a doctor who recognised that this was serious and investigated and communicated with the of Health and the Medical Officer of Health for Simcoe Muskoka Health Unit. There was no protocol for recovery, so I had to self manage but I had a great deal of help with my healing including the use of the Traditional Land in Algonquin Park for recovery.
I was shocked at the health impact of this exposure and recognised that people and children presenting at emergency with these flu-like symptoms could be tragic. The Health Unit identifies their frustration at their inability to get the public to understand the issue and of course if people are not aware there is a serious problem they will not know how important it is to protect and restore the health of the watershed. There is an ongoing problem with the Tourism and marketing and real estate industries do not want people toy to know our watershed has these challenges
If I am elected to be the next Mayor of Huntsville I will ensure we have a well advertising public meeting as soon as possible to discuss this man-made issue and come up with a plan that makes a difference. I am prepared to speak to this to any audience interested in knowing the perils and I am sure that our Medical Officer of Health will be grateful for the attention to this issue.
We can no longer be compromising our ecology and this question is connected to the first in many ways. If we look at backing away from building on any shorelines and create an official plan that ensures the people who are developing land and building in Huntsville do so under a very clear mandate to follow the rules. I had sat at too many council meetings watching heads nodding amendments and now we are paying the price. If we do not look at the tannery site and get the testing, we will never know, and it could be something that ruins Muskoka some day. The water that passes us here passes through the drain at the Bala Falls four days later …we have a responsibility to do no harm to the water as it flows to Georgian Bay.

Scott Aitchison – Urban and rural planning
All development must be managed to minimize its impact on the natural environment. All municipal planning in Ontario is directed and guided by the Province via the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS). It is clear from the PPS that the Province strongly encourages development to happen in greater densities in urban areas on full municipal services. This direction is intended to reduce urban sprawl, create ‘liveable communities’ and to protect the rural area from unfettered growth. I have always been an avid supporter of urban development in the core of Huntsville.
I do support rural and waterfront development, but not at the same scale and density as in the core. The waterfront is a settlement area in Huntsville and Muskoka, but it is clearly a sensitive area to build in. Enjoyment of the water is important for all of us, and so protecting the quality of the water must be the primary lens through which we adjudicate all waterfront development proposals. As a past Chair of the Planning Committee, I introduced a policy requiring all waterfront development – of any scale or size – to be subject to site plan approval. This tool gives the municipality far more control over waterfront development and the tools to ensure what is approved remains without changes.
Rural development should be small in scale. It is my goal to keep the rural area looking rural – not suburban. To that end, as Chair of Planning and Chair of the last Official Plan Review Committee, I worked with committee and staff to double the minimum lot size required to develop in the rural area.

Peggy Peterson – Urban and rural planning
The truth of how we treated our shorelines over the past 100 years in many ways explains the challenges that our planning department is having now. I have been around government for many years challenging many levels of government regarding watershed protection since we hosted the G8 in Huntsville in 2010 and I learned many things. I learned that this event impacted our economy and was a great expense to our entire ecology. Fast forward for 8 years and I was not seeing any movement towards better planning, so I decided to try to work within government to create a change in attitude and direction so I running to be your Mayor. I am enjoying every moment of this and the number of people engaging in this election is inspiring.
I want to work with all the parties involved to get the important future land use questions and find solutions that we can put in play over the next four years that will ensure everyone is included in the conversation and we are socially responsible, environmentally respectful and work hard to create community inclusive. I am very concerned about the development on the Highway 60 corridor looking as dangerous for drivers as the worst design in Ontario, Bayfield Street. This is never going to be safer as it is happening and the number of near misses in the commercial stretch are staggering. This tells me our planning is not working comprehensively to keep us safe.
Huntsville needs a full appraisal of our urban center to address immediate needs for housing for all ages and stages and resilient environment planning with serious consideration about the obvious b and serious impacts of climate change and our storm water management. These rains are not going to get any lighter and with Ottawa area seeing a full Tornado last week we can have to plan for these scenarios to play out locally.
Our urban center is critical for responding to disasters and we need to stop electing politicians and start electing states people who put the community ahead of themselves. It is a systemic problem and I believe we need to open the conversation with friends and neighbours about what is working rather than maintaining this competition between governments for $$$$ that is taking its tole on every facet of the population.
Our urban growth must include housing for all generations and life stages and we must address both the homelessness problem and the hopelessness problem that comes from the fact that the average income for people living in Huntsville is scandalously close to the poverty line. Many people do not feel like the previous councils were listening and that will be the most important part of my leadership pattern. I want the people to feel genuinely included and I want the staff to feel the same. That is the toughest job for any Mayor, to create space for inclusive conversations about we want for the entire community. I plan to l be reopened the Unity Plan and having a good look at the excellent solutions found there. I also want to reach out to other municipalities who face many of the same challenges we do, that is why this job will be full time for me.
I am disturbed by the fact that the current council is pushing the legal process for replacing our Official Plan during the election and I have asked them to shelve it for now, but they are not responding. I look forward to sitting in the circle at the District and reading the report on the complicated Resort residential Commercial situation that is being created by District before we finalize the details in our new OP and that must be done by the new Council. We need to stop the fast and furious shovel ready mindset and reset our direction to be kinder and gentler and a little more demanding on what gets built and how things get built ensuring it is done in a responsible respectful way. Our economy is based on tourism, cottagers and construction and we must support these industries and add more low impact high income employment opportunities during our planning process and ensure the details are clear enough and strong enough to simplify everything for everyone involved.

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