Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Landowners plead for help halting caterpillar invasion

By Stu Mills, Ottawa Citizen, July 15, 2020

Property owners in eastern Ontario are calling on their local and provincial governments for help handling an invasion of gypsy moth caterpillars.

The red-and-blue-speckled caterpillars are an invasive species that can completely defoliate a tree, causing long-term damage. 

In the Otty Lake area of Tay Valley Township, about 90 kilometres southwest of Ottawa, the fuzzy caterpillars arrived in June and began munching the oaks and basswoods on Dan Woods's two-hectare property.

"We came here because of the trees. The trees drew us," said the retired military engineer, who moved to the area with Tineke Doornbosch in 2004.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/landowners-plead-help-gypsy-moth-1.5649217?ref=mobilerss&cmp=newsletter_CBC%20Ottawa_1643_57783

City beautification projects one key to saving habitat for native bees

By Bailey Moreton, Capital Current, July 13, 2020

Ottawa City Council is taking positive strides towards preserving bees and other pollinator populations in Ottawa, but more needs to be done, according to experts as climate change accelerates.

Recent initiatives include the building of a garden near City Hall and an educational speaker’s event held in April.

City staff are also reviewing roadside maintenance standards, an environmental projects grant program and proposing new “beautification projects” to create more natural, bee habitat, according to a memo released on behalf of city council.

(...)More needs to be done to give bees and other pollinators a “fighting chance,” according to Natasha Jovanovic, Living City Organizer with Ecology Ottawa.

“The only way that we will be able to effectively help pollinators in the long-run is integrating more greenspaces and green infrastructure throughout Ottawa. Pollinators are already under stress and – as the latest climate report points out – it will only get worse,” said Jovanovic.

https://capitalcurrent.ca/city-beautification-projects-one-key-to-saving-habitat-for-native-bees/

TSB to investigate Ottawa light rail train wheel cracking

By Mike Vlasveld, 1310 News, July 10, 2020

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is conducting a 'class 3' investigation on Ottawa's light rail system after cracks were found on four wheels of three separate trains.

The cracks were found during ongoing maintenance and inspection efforts by Rideau Transit Maintenance (RTM).

(...)The government agency says, "It is quite likely that new safety lessons will be identified and that transportation safety will be advanced by reducing risks to persons, property, or the environment."

Grassy Narrows First Nation fears further mercury poisoning as Ford government ends assessments for clear-cut logging

By Moira Welsh and David Bruser, Toronto Star, July 10, 2020

Indigenous communities in Ontario’s north fear another round of mercury poisoning after the provincial government eliminated environmental assessments for commercial clear-cutting on Crown forest land.

The change was made on Canada Day, a few hours after Premier Doug Ford’s office posted a news release that listed more than a dozen regulatory and legislative changes within 11 ministries.

The government says it is “ending duplication” by removing logging activities from the Environmental Assessment Act, which falls under the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. Now, logging plans and practices will only be answerable to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, and its Crown Forest Sustainability Act.g

Little Italy grocery-anchored complex receives easy planning OK, while church project draws community ire

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, July 10, 2020

The lower half of Little Italy is one step closer to seeing a new mixed-use high-rise complex anchored by a grocery store.

Usually a big infill complex proposed by a developer has at least a couple of residents lined up with concerns, but not a single person signed up to address the planning committee Thursday about Arnon Corp.’s plans to build a large surface parking lot off Little Italy’s commercial main street.

(...)

A full-size grocery store along Beech Street is intended for the first floor, but there has been no official word on the identity of the grocer. A liquor store is also included in the ground-floor plan filed with the development application.

The Preston-Carling district secondary plan encourages the establishment of a grocery store in the area, since the community has been considered a food “desert” with no large food store in close proximity.

Adelaar: LeBreton Flats must be about social benefits as well as business ones

By Martin Adelaar, Ottawa Citizen, July 11, 2020

In 1962, the government of Canada forcibly evicted more than 3,000 working-class residents from their homes in LeBreton Flats and transferred ownership of the 65-acre site to the National Capital Commission (NCC). Sixty years later, most of the land remains vacant and this historic injustice is largely forgotten. Now the NCC is poised to redevelop the property in ways that may again ignore the expressed needs and aspirations of the community.

The LeBreton Flats Community Benefits Coalition seeks to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with the NCC. We’ve launched a public campaign to get the NCC to commit to a benefits agreement for LeBreton Flats.

Formed a year ago, the coalition comprises 27 organizations, including community associations near LeBreton Flats, United Way East Ontario, and groups involved in affordable housing, health care, education, labour, Indigenous services, social procurement, child care and several other sectors. The coalition shares a vision of LeBreton Flats as a vibrant, inclusive, equitable, healthy and sustainable community where everyone can work, live and thrive. We’re inviting everyone to join.

The Good Sewer: Why Ottawa’s $232-million sewage storage tunnel is both an engineering marvel and an act of contrition

By Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen, July 12, 2020

For the past three years, some nine storeys beneath downtown Ottawa, work crews have been tunnelling a solution to one of this city’s oldest problems: sewage.

The combined sewage storage tunnel, the CSST, is designed to hold for treatment sewage-contaminated storm water that would otherwise be discharged into the Ottawa River.

Ottawa has polluted its namesake river grossly, relentlessly, for the better part of two centuries. Billions of litres of raw sewage have been dumped into the water since Bytown was founded in 1826.

The city’s sewage management has been controversial for almost as long. The complex array of pipes and pumps built to ferry Ottawa’s sewage to the river has led to fatal typhoid epidemics, exploding manhole covers, and fetid scandal. Until 1963, when the city’s first sewage treatment plant opened, every litre of waste flushed into Ottawa’s sewer system ended up in the river.

(...)The tunnel, scheduled to go into operation later this year, will dramatically reduce the amount of sewage piped into the Ottawa River in a typical year. Sewage will continue to spill into the waterway during the spring melt, but for the rest of the year, the CSST is expected to protect it during all but the most exceptional storms.

LRT service reduced to seven trains as cracks found on three steel wheels

By the Ottawa Citizen, July 4, 2020

The city will allow the Rideau Transit Group and trainmaker Alstom to reduce its LRT service to seven trains as they try to identify the cause and repair cracks discovered in three steel train wheels.

Service was reduced on the troubled Confederation Line Friday morning after a crack was found on a steel wheel of one of the trains during Thursday night maintenance.

(...)While work continues to determine the root causes of the cracks, all LRT vehicles will now be inspected after each run.

Somerset Village closes to weekend traffic, Downtown BIA Bank plans weekend vehicle ban

By the Ottawa Citizen, July 4, 2020

Somerset Village has joined the growing list of Ottawa streets closing to traffic to encourage pedestrians to roam.

And eat and shop.

In response to a sarcastic tweeter wailing “But where will we park?” the councillor said: “We will park our butts on a stool!”

The stretch between Bank and O’Connor streets will now be closed to traffic Friday nights, and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 11 p.m.

The closure will allow more space for patios and safer pedestrian access.

Mayor Jim Watson also tweeted about the closure and encouraged Ottawa residents to get out and support small businesses.

What’s going on here? Sidewalk improvements for Almonte, Pakenham

By Ashley Kulp, InsideOttawaValley, July 5, 2020

Mississippi Mills is taking steps to improve pedestrian safety this summer.

Over the next few months, new curbs and sidewalks will be installed throughout the municipality, with the most recent work by Ottawa’s Prestige Design and Construction, taking place along Almonte Street near the Metcalfe Geoheritage Park over the last two weeks.

Sidewalks along Almonte's Queen Street have also seen work and similar projects will be undertaken in Pakenham over the summer.

https://www.insideottawavalley.com/news-story/10058404-what-s-going-on-here-sidewalk-improvements-for-almonte-pakenham/?s=n1?source=newsletter&utm_content=a03&utm_source=ml_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=6cf0e4c8dfed7b7e28f22e123857e24f&utm_campaign=ovha_79951

'We're getting hammered': Gypsy moth outbreak devastating Eastern Ontario forests

By Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen, July 3, 2020

Gypsy moth caterpillars are munching their way through Eastern Ontario forests this summer in numbers not seen in 30 years, stripping leaves from sugar maples, oaks and evergreens so quickly you can almost watch the forest canopy disappear.

“Our forests are under attack here in Eastern Ontario,” said Jim McCready, a forester and arborist with nearly 50 years experience. “We had the forest tent caterpillar. Now we’ve got the gypsy moth. And you’ve got the drought. We’re getting hammered.”

McCready, past president of Eastern Ontario Model Forest, a non-profit agency that helps protect and manage the region’s forests, said this year’s gypsy moth hatch is as bad as the past peak of the destructive pest in the late 1980s. The outbreak stretches in a belt across the region from Belleville to Bancroft and even as far north as Mattawa, he said. Gypsy moths are always present in the region, but foresters were caught off guard by how severe this year’s infestation has become.

Ivison: If there is loose COVID cash, what better use than to stop the sewage flowing into Canada's waters

By John Ivison, Ottawa Citizen, July 3, 2020

With the rosy glow from Canada Day still fresh in the memory, Canadians can reflect with pride on the watery wonderland they call home — a pristine wilderness, bordered by three mighty oceans, that contains one-fifth of the world’s fresh water and two million lakes.

The reality is a little less pleasant on the senses.

While 90 per cent of America’s community water systems were in compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards in 2016, 24 per cent of Canada’s wastewater systems failed to meet Environment Canada’s quality criteria.

In that year, two billion cubic metres (more than 500 billion gallons) of untreated, or under-treated, effluent was flushed into the country’s waterways. That’s enough wastewater to fill 800,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Worse, 85 of the 491 treatment systems that were tested, discharged effluent of “acute lethality” — designated as waste that at 100 per cent concentration would kill more than 50 per cent of rainbow trout exposed to it during a 96-hour period.