Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Adam: NCC should forget about a new Ottawa River bridge

By Mohammed Adam, Ottawa Citizen, January 23, 2020

Under orders from the federal government, the National Capital Commission is currently “refreshing” an abandoned 2013 plan to build a new bridge in the capital. The review is expected to be completed early this year. At the same time, the government has charged the NCC with developing an integrated, sustainable transportation plan for the capital that includes LRT, buses, cars and cycling. The NCC is in the process of hiring a consultant to complete that plan by the spring of 2021.

It is difficult to understand why the NCC has been given these conflicting assignments. The government is right to demand a comprehensive, sustainable interprovincial transportation plan for the capital. Such a blueprint is long overdue. But the Liberals can’t in the same breath consider building a new bridge to carry mainly cars. Forget the bridge.

(...)But the time for new bridges is gone. This is not the same as Montreal’s Champlain bridge, which is on a busy provincial highway. It’s surprising that a government committed to battling climate change, would want a new bridge in the capital to carry more cars and create more pollution.

What does it take to make art green?

By Leah Collins, CBC News, January 21, 2020

Where there are people, there will be trash. So let's say you're walking some rainforest trail on Vancouver Island, and your boot crunches down on a beer can or protein-bar wrapper. Would Captain Planet's teachings kick in? Would you pocket that junk and bin it later? Or would you keep hiking, trusting nature will eventually absorb that trash into its mossy bosom. What's 500 years or so, give or take?

Alex Stewart, however, is a guy who squats for litter, and the B.C. artist says he doesn't hit the woods without a garbage bag. He makes art for people who might not be as Planeteer-ingly minded as he is, and since 2018, the Fort Langley resident's been hiding his paintings in popular hiking trails around the West Coast, stencilling portraits of mysterious sirens on dead stumps and logs.

Made with biodegradable paints, the images are designed to fade away in a matter of weeks. "A lot of people walk through the trail systems, at least here, and they'll walk by a piece of garbage and not pick it up," says Stewart. "This is a way to get people to engage more with the environment and maybe think a little bit more about it."

Is BlackRock going green? Or greenwashing?

By Dan Drolette, National Observer, January 19, 2020

This story was originally published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

On Tuesday, January 14, the New York Times ran a story in its “Dealbook” business section that contained some startling news. Larry Fink, the founder and chief executive officer of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, announced that his firm would fundamentally shift its investing policy to focus on climate change. The idea is for BlackRock—a firm overseeing $7 trillion in investments—to get out of coal and other fossil fuels, which he called a “high sustainability-related risk.” In fact, said the Times, “His [Fink’s] intent is to encourage every company, not just energy firms, to rethink their carbon footprints.”

In his annual newsletter, Fink went into more detail, saying that BlackRock would introduce new funds that shun fossil fuel-oriented stocks, move aggressively to vote against management teams that are not making progress on sustainability, and press companies to disclose plans “for operating under a scenario where the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees is fully realized.”

Today's letters: On the LRT's woes, and a thanks to health care workers

By Laura Neidhart and Andrew Hartshorn, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, January 20, 2020

City’s attitude on LRT is insulting

Re: Commuter chaos Thursday, outrage hours after downed power line immobilizes LRT, Jan. 17.

I watched the press conference on the Ottawa LRT failures Friday, and I am appalled that, once again, Mayor Jim Watson and OC Transpo representatives attempted to shift the blame for everything from elevator failures to train delays onto passengers. I have lived in cities such as London (England) with mass transit serving millions of daily commuters, and have even experienced the roll-out of brand new LRT in Seattle. These are not anticipated hiccups of a new system, but rather appear to be the result of systemic dysfunction of both light-rail and City Hall.

(...)LRT: Fire the lot of them

As a citizen of this city, I am sick of listening to the managers of the Rideau Transit Maintenance group and the city trying to explain problems with LRT which they obviously have never seen before, and asking us to have a little patience.

As we stand in the freezing cold waiting for a bus instead of a train, or slide down icy wet staircases, or deal with closing doors as we scramble to board a train that may or may not get us to our destination, it is time for management replacement.

(...)In the meantime, bring back the buses for at least a year until LRT has operated trouble-free for at least three months.The design of the whole system is so bad, who signed off on it?

Reusing plastic bottles for safety’s sake

By Don Mercer, InsideOttawaValley, January 16, 2020

This is definitely not my idea, and it may not be new to some of you. However, it is certainly something that is well worth sharing since it may help you avoid some potentially serious injuries. It also has a relationship to food in general because it involves using otherwise discarded containers.

A few years ago, while visiting a friend’s home in the Toronto area. I noticed that they had put inverted plastic water bottles on all the stakes around their tomato plants and elsewhere in their garden

(...)By placing an empty plastic bottle over the exposed end of each stake, the risk of injury was significantly reduced. Not only do the bottles create a blunt end to the stakes, but they also make them more visible.

I’ve used this idea as a safeguard on several metal pipes that we’ve put in the ground to support some Christmas spotlights. Once the spotlights have been removed, it is often not possible to pull the pipes from the frozen ground until the spring thaw arrives. By placing bottles over the ends of these pipes, things are just a little bit safer than they would otherwise be with the ends of the pipes exposed.

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Councillor Gower shares his plan to revitalize Stittsville Main Street

By Glen Gower, StittsvilleCentral, January 17, 2020

Stittsville Main Street is the centre and soul of our community. It links neighbourhoods from north to south and intersects with important east-west routes including Hazeldean Road and the Trans Canada Trail. In many ways Stittsville Main is what differentiates Stittsville from other suburban communities in Ottawa.

Ask residents why they moved to Stittsville and many will tell you “the village feel”. To this day, the historic village remains visible through the 19th century buildings around Abbott Street where a busy rail station was once a magnet for commerce and employment. Stittsville’s rail history lives on at Village Square Park – a community gathering place; and the Trans Canada Trail, the former rail route, now turned into an active corridor for walking, cycling, running and skiing.

My goal is to help Stittsville Main Street continue to evolve, so that it continues to be a point of civic pride for our community. To that end, I’ve published a discussion paper called “Revitalizing Stittsville Main Street” at glengower.ca/stittsville-main.

When parts of the brand-new LRT fall off, is it time to worry?

By Joanne Chianello, CBC News Ottawa, January 18, 2020

It's hard to know what has become more tiresome when it comes to our not-always-reliable Confederation Line: officials' apologies to commuters for their "frustration" or those same officials' rationalizations that, whatever the issue du jour — door jams, cracked track welds, stuck elevators or, this week's transit surprise, a huge swath of downed electrical cable — it's simply par for the course.

The apologies, at least, are understandable. While surely most transit riders would rather have a more reliable light-rail service, the least they should expect from their city officials is an apology for their troubles.

Over the past few months, they've received them from everyone from Mayor Jim Watson, to OC Transpo boss John Manconi, to LRT-constructor Rideau Transit Group CEO Peter Lauch.

That they've had to plead for forbearance on the part of OC Transpo customers on numerous occasions is bad enough. That they appear careful to apologize exclusively for the inconvenience caused to customers appears downright patronizing.

City inspectors noted problems with LRT switch heaters over two winters, flagged serious deficiencies in lead up to March deadline

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, January 16, 2020

Just two months before the missed LRT handover in March, city’s inspectors were still finding problems with rail switch heaters not working in ugly winter conditions and receiving a cold shoulder from the builder when it came to mandatory reporting.

Dozens of LRT construction deficiency reports recently released by the city cover the period between Nov. 22, 2018 and March 28, 2019 as the Rideau Transit Group (RTG) was making a push, after missing the previous Nov. 2, 2018 handover, to meet a new handover deadline on March 31.

The current handover deadline arrives on Friday, but even that seems to be up in the air since, as of Thursday, the city hadn’t updated council on the mandatory 12 consecutive days of trial running. Twelve days from the start of the trial actually ended last Friday.

'For our future generations to enjoy': Kemptville Agroforestry Centre receives forest stewardship certification

By Pauline Hrebacka, InsideOttawaValley, January 17, 2020 The forests on Kemptville Campus property have received certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) through the Eastern Ontario Model Forest’s program, which represents woodlots that are managed in an environmentally, economically and socially responsible way. The announcement took place Jan. 17 at the Kemptville Agroforestry Educational Centre (2629 Bedell Road).

“This is a certified Model Forest and maple production for our future generations to enjoy,” said Frank Heerkens, owner of On the Bend Sugar Shack located on-site. “We are now allowed to put FSC stickers on our maple syrup.”

LRT disruption could extend into Friday

ByTrevor Pritchard,  CBC News Ottawa, January 16, 2020

East-end LRT riders will have to rely on bus service through the afternoon rush hour — and possibly even tomorrow morning — after a broken overhead power line halted service Thursday.

The wire broke around 10:50 a.m. and apparently fell onto a train as it entered St-Laurent station, said Troy Charter, the City of Ottawa's director of transit operations, at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Shortly afterward, OC Transpo announced that buses would be replacing LRT service between Hurdman and Blair stations.

Charter said the system "functioned as intended" and that power was immediately cut to both the overhead wires and the train.

While Rideau Transit Maintenance was working to restore service as quickly as possible, there was a chance that wouldn't happen until Friday, Charter said.

How to ease the environmental footprint of 2020 travel

By Cassandra Szklarski, National Observer, January 15, 2020

It was a recent trip to Australia during the country's devastating wildfires that got Paul Winston thinking seriously about changing his globetrotting habits.

The Victoria doctor says he came back from this past Christmas holiday wondering about the impact his own travels have on the environment, convinced that the terrifying bush fires are linked to the climate crisis.

(...)Winston says it's also hard to know whether specific offset credits align with his own eco-goals, and he's worried about sharing personal details on online emissions calculators.

Eco-experts say the New Year is a popular time for average folks to bump up green efforts, even as they plan winter getaways.

Of course, they encourage travellers to consider less impactful modes — bus and rail travel are much better options than short-haul flights and gas-guzzling SUV road trips — and keep those trips closer to home.

European carmakers build out charging network for electrics

By David McHugh, the Associated Press, 1310 News, January 16, 2020

FRANKFURT — European automakers’ network of highway charging stations for battery-powered vehicles is taking shape ahead of an expected surge in electric car sales as manufacturers strive to meet new emission limits.

Ionity, the joint venture created among automakers to build the network, said Thursday it has completed more than 200 stations and expects to have 400 operating by the end of the year. Each station has 4-6 charging columns.

The highway network is seen as a key step in convincing car buyers they can switch to electrics and still take long highway trips without worrying about running out of juice during a family vacation.