Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Connaught’s oasis in the concrete jungle

By Charlie Senack, Kitchessippi Times, June 13, 2019

Connaught Public School, located at 1149 Gladstone Ave., is surrounded by a concrete jungle of high rise condos but in the middle of it all sits an urban oasis — a place where students can learn, play and grow.

As a part of Connaught’s schoolyard renewal campaign, the parent council wanted to find ways to revitalize a small section of land tucked in the corner of the schoolyard.

“We had to utilize every single square inch that we had and we had to figure out how we would make this space into something the kids would be able to use,” says Kerry Barnes, a parent on the school’s council championed the schoolyard renewal project.

At the beginning of the 2017/2018 school year, the parent council asked the teachers for their input on how the space should be used and then started to get to work. Parent volunteers crafted and installed log benches, purchased new picnic tables, and covered the ground in clover.

GREEN BINS: Plastic bags, dog feces okay as of July 2

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Sun, June 14, 2019

Ottawa residents can start tossing plastic bags and dog feces in their green bins on July 2, the city says.

Council voted in March 2018 to allow plastics and dog feces in the green bin in a renegotiated deal with Renewi, the organics plant operator, to resolve outstanding contract disputes.

The city’s auditor general discovered municipal taxpayers were overpaying to send organics to the Renewi plant (formerly the Orgaworld plant).

'Smelly and gross' green bins major barrier to increased use: study

By Laurie Fagan, CBC News Ottawa, June 14, 2019

Starting next month, Ottawa residents will be able to use plastic bags in their green bins — and city officials are hoping that will eliminate the "ick factor" around the organic waste program.

Just over 30 per cent of residents with access to curbside green bins say they don't use them as often as they could because they consider them "smelly and gross," according to a survey of households commissioned by the city and carried out by Hill and Knowlton Strategies.

• Plastic bags to be allowed in green bins as of summer 2019

Last December, some 1,200 people across Ottawa were asked about their recycling and composting habits, and whether the city's communications strategy about the waste diversion program was working.

Of those surveyed, 77 per cent said they were using their curbside bins. That's a significant increase from the 50 per cent who said they were doing so in a 2014-15 city waste audit, although city staff cautioned the methodology in those two surveys was different.

We're officially a big city. Let's start acting like one

By Joanne Chianello, CBC News Ottawa, June 14, 2019

Today, Ottawa officially becomes a big city, a metropolis even — a national capital of one million people.

Not precisely today, of course. This is our best guess, based on statistics. When Mayor Jim Watson makes the pronouncement of our seven-figure population milestone in front of City Hall Friday afternoon, he won't be able to name our one-millionth resident.

But he is right to mark this as a turning point, if only symbolically.

(...)Living in a livable city

Surpassing this population milestone needn't necessarily alter the essence of our city — the approachable livability we long to preserve.

Our proximity to nature, our bike path network, our transit system, the national museums and monuments — all these make Ottawa an ideal place to live for so many. And while housing prices have been on the rise, they haven't quite hit the socially disruptive levels seen in Toronto or Vancouver.

Today's letters: Transit, D-Day and the pipeline

By Sinclair Robinson, Ottawa Citizen Letter to the Editor, June 14, 2019

Who’s pandering, Mr. Mayor?

Re: Heated council meeting ends with extended transit fare freeze but no reduction, June 13.

Mayor Jim Watson seems to be saying that lowering charges (for bus transit) is pandering to certain groups, in view of simple economics, and therefore bad. What about the mayor’s perennial freezing of tax increases to two per cent, in order to get re-elected, when the city’s infrastructure was in desperate need of more funding? Was that not pandering?

Today's letters: On Ottawa's swans, and Canada's plastics problem

By Nicole Morin and others, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, June 15, 2019 Let’s not be a cheapskate city

Re: Dump the swans and spoil the Château. Well done, Ottawa, June 13.

Is this city so cheap that it cannot afford to maintain a few swans on the Rideau River? Surely we can afford to build a decent winter facility for them. Stratford, Ont. is a much smaller city than Ottawa and it maintains a substantial population of swans. If our swan population is currently too low, I am sure Stratford could spare us a few. (...)We can live without plastic – in fact, we already have Re: PM setting the stage for plastics ban, June 10. I lived half my life without plastic and never missed it: milk in reusable glass bottles; meat and cheese wrapped in brown paper, tied with a cotton string; a loaf of bread wrapped in waxed paper and recycled at home for many uses; vegetables and fruit hand-picked in separate bins at the store; assortment of delicious cookies sold by the pound; condiments (pickles, ketchup, etc.) in glass jars; groceries carried in cotton or paper bags; heavier loads carried in sturdy paper shopping bags with handles, used over and over again; manufactured containers made of paper, cardboard, glass or metal, often recycled as shelf containers at home; paper straws and absolutely no food wrappers in restaurants; thermoses, small glass containers, waxed paper and paper bags used for school/office lunches; dry staples neatly kept in sealed glass jars/containers; meal leftovers stored in the refrigerator in glass dishes or containers. (...)How about some more research first? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that banning single-use plastics will create jobs. He was silent on where, what type, and how many. Does the Trudeau government know how many industries in Canada either produce or use recycled plastic and the number of employees involved? By banning single-use products, how many Canadians will lose their employment? Does the government have a plan for retraining or compensating these employees for the loss of their jobs?  How much would the Canadian government have to pay American and Mexican companies under the terms of NAFTA/USMCA  for the loss of their market from an arbitrary government decision?

Transpo is focused on launching LRT, but mayor's election promise requires attention on electric buses

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, June 15, 2019

Researching electric buses for OC Transpo’s fleet would be redundant, expensive and time-consuming for a department fixated on delivering more than $6 billion in LRT infrastructure, but Mayor Jim Watson had a campaign promise, so staff will work toward buying one or more of the transit vehicles within the next three years.

At the beginning of May, Transpo wasn’t keen on an electric bus pilot project, judging by a written response to Coun. Catherine McKenney.

This week, staff didn’t raise any concerns when council unanimously voted for a Watson proposal to get a plan on the table of the transit commission in seven days.

On introducing electric buses this term, Watson said during a council meeting last Wednesday, “That’s my goal and that’s the commitment I made to the people of Ottawa.”

Study tries to bring human behaviour into climate change projections

By the Canadian Press, National Observer, June 10, 2019

Climate change can seem like a problem too vast for everyday people to influence, but research using computer models suggests that public attitudes and social learning can have a measurable impact on global warming.

"It feels like it's a bit of a hopeful study, in that it is possible for this change to happen," said Madhur Anand of the University of Guelph. "It's a big challenge and a lot of things have to change."

Mathematical models of how climate responds to different levels of greenhouse gases are a mainstay of climate science. Those models, however, don't take into account how humans respond to those changes.

That's a potential feedback left out of calculations.

Campus Safety, Ottawa police partner to promote bike safety service

By Leila El Shannawy, The Charlatan, June 7, 2019

Campus Safety and the Ottawa police have partnered to promote a bicycle safety service on Carleton’s campus this week.

The service is an app and website, called 529 Garage, which allows bike owners to register their bikes so that—in the event their bike is stolen—Ottawa police can more easily track down and return owners’ bikes to them.

Carleton’s Sustainability Office, which works to promote sustainability initiatives on campus, is also involved in the partnership to promote the bike safety service.

How millions of Ontario trees escaped Doug Ford’s cuts

By Elaine Alselmi, Climate Watch, June 6, 2019

(...)Planting a forest isn’t cheap. At the first property we visit, a 5.5-hectare former hay farm, it costs about $3,800 per hectare, factoring in labour, the cost of nearly 11,000 seedlings, and the creation of a forest­-management plan. That’s why, in 2008, the then-Liberal provincial government unveiled the 50 Million Tree Program, which subsidizes the costs of planting and was initially intended to encourage communities and private landowners to plant 50 million trees by 2020.

(...)But, in April, the Progressive Conservative government announced that it was cutting the program. The money, the Tories argued, wasn’t being put to good use. In the 11 years since its inception, the program helped fund the planting of 27 million trees, “well short of their initial goal of 50,000,000 trees by 2020,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry told TVO.org via email. By contrast, she added, “the forest industry has planted over 1,000,000,000 trees since 2005.”

Rob Keen, CEO of Forests Ontario, disagrees with that assessment. He points out that, in 2013, the province extended the program through 2025 because the funding hadn’t kept up with the rising costs of planting.

 

Plant it, and they will come

By Judith Van Berkhom, Kitchissippi Times, June 11, 2019

How often do we ask ourselves or wonder what we could do to reverse, arrest, or slow down, the effects of climate change and the extinction of bird and insect species here in the city? We feel powerless. What possible difference could one person make? But history has shown us over and over again the power of one to affect change.

(...)“I wanted to plant the front, where it was sunny, not with grass, but with plants that would help the environment. I decided to make a pollinator garden,” she says. Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy and Gardens of the High Line by Piet Oudolf, both available from the Ottawa Public Library, inspired, guided her choices, and provided the information needed to get started.

Hawkesbury mayor wants higher littering fine considered

By James Morgan, The Review, June 11, 2019

The mayor of Hawkesbury wants to get tough on trash.

At the May 27 council meeting, Mayor Paula Assaly introduced a notice of motion requesting that an increase be considered on the littering fine in the town.

Currently, the fine for littering in Hawkesbury is $253.75 and that amount includes the administrative court fees, according to Clerk Christine Groulx. The fine amount has not changed since the by-law was first approved by council in 1989.