Based on Bill23 More Homes Built Faster Act, the proposed changes to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES) endanger wetlands, and the designated Wetlands in Romanin’s Property and Beachwood Development Inc project may not qualify as significant anymore, due to the new evaluation points system.
1. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry has been responsible for ensuring that OWES evaluations were completed by trained professionals - such as Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authorities (NVCA). They provided training and certification in the OWES method. The Ministry was also responsible for maintaining the records about each evaluated wetland.
Now based on Bill 23, Responsibility will fall on municipalities, most of which lack the resources and experience to run OWES training courses and validate evaluation files. Municipalities will have to cover these new costs.
2. Two changes to OWES will make it harder for a wetland to score high enough to be classified as a Provincially Significant Wetland:
- First, the Special Features category will no longer count the value of a wetland for threatened and endangered species.
- Second, the changes to OWES will take away “complexing.” Under complexing, pieces of a larger, interconnected wetland are not evaluated in isolation but as an integrated whole, even if those pieces are on the property of separate landowners. This makes sense – the groundwater is connected, the flood waters run from one into another, and the birds, turtles, frogs and dragonflies all move from patch to patch. Without complexing, we will see death by a thousand cuts as no fragment is considered valuable enough on its own to be a Provincially Significant Wetland.
3. The OWES changes introduce “re-evaluations” so that already-evaluated Provincially Significant Wetlands can be re-classified using the new designed-to-fail OWES. OWES files have always been considered “open files” subject to updates, but some conservation authorities worry this change will put nearly all remaining wetlands on the chopping block.
Don’t let our valuable wetlands be destroyed to make way for sprawling, unaffordable single-family homes.
Take action to Save Ontario Wetlands! https://saveontariowetlands.weebly.com/take-action.html
See Infographic below by #SaveOntarioWetlands