Trees kick butt!

Trees win in urban growth battle

OMB Appeal trek

Dark and ancient gods don’t go away gracefully.

Absentreeism

London’s tree cover has dropped to 10%, well behind other municipalities and below the recommended level of 30%. Suspected statistical anomolies put London’s civic workers absenteeism rate at 19 days, above the average of 8.

Significant depends on what you breathe

Jonathon Sher reports in Woodlands’ fate in hands of OMB:

A two-week hearing before the Ontario Municipal Board ended with lawyers for the city and an activist defending a policy that protects most of the city’s larger woodlands against development. Under that policy, adopted by council in 2006, the city expects to declare as significant — and protect — about 96 per cent of woodlands that are at least four hectares. An older policy protected as little as 25 per cent of those woodlands.

The arguments are being challenged by Developers and their lawyers:

But his argument and that of the city was challenged by lawyer Barry Card, who’s representing developers such as Farhi Holdings, Sifton Properties, Drewlo Holdings, Z-Group and a lobby group that represents the industry, the London Development Institute.

Rather than make changes by amending the city’s official plan, a labour-intensive step that engages the public and experts, the city adopted a new policy, Card said.

“It really amounts to a sell-out of the planning process,” he said.

Under old rules, a woodland wasn’t significant unless it rated high in three of several categories that include size, composition, age and history. New rules require only a single high rating.

“That takes 1,000 hectares (of woodlands) off the table,” Card said.

That takes 1000 hectares of trees off the protected state and allows them to be clearcut to build suburbs, driveways, roads and golf ball driving ranges. In an earlier story, Debate blooming again over London’s tree-protection policy from Wed, January 16, 2008 By PATRICK MALONEY, SUN MEDIA, Card said:

“It’s not about whether significant woodlands will be protected — but whether insignificant woodlands will be protected,” said lawyer Barry Card, who is representing a consortium of local developers at the hearing. “Developers like treed communities. What they don’t like is a change of the rules that’s arbitrary or ill-advised.”

I guess breathing is ill-advised. Developers like treed communities because the houses on the edge of the woodlot sell for more money. Funny. Seems people like trees. They like cars, and they like trees. From Trees In Trust;

An acre of trees absorb enough carbon dioxide in a year to equal the amount produced when you drive a car (41,000 km). (North Carolina State University Trees of Strength).

Now get out a calculator.

if 1000 hectares = 2471.05381 acres

then 1 acre = .40468564224 hectare

1 acre can deal with the CO2 from 1 car driving 41,000 km so

the CO2 absorption per hectare would be… 41,000 x .40468 or 16,592.085 km

Let’s do some looking for the average mileage of a vehicle in a year. What’s the average mileage of a second hand car? The average mileage on Canadian car works out to between 10,000 and 15,000 k per year, so let’s say 12500 k.

Now, from TRANSPORTATION: Road vehicles Canada averages .58 vehicles per person, where the average for OECD countries is .5. According to Wikipedia, the population of London is 457720. We commonly round this to 450000. This gives us a vehicle count of between 225000 and 265477.

Let’s do some rounding:

CO2 per hectare: 16,500 -> 16000 -> 4

year avg mileage: 12,500 -> 12000 -> 3

So, 1.33 cars per hectare. 1000 hectares support the annual CO2 emissions from 130,000 cars, and London should have about twice that many vehicles.

Ask yourself then, is 1000 hectares an insignificant woodlot?

Mr. Card and this developer consortium argue that it’s good policy to cut out your lungs. Ironically, trees support urban sprawl. The more trees you have, the more CO2 from cars you can support.

The good ol’ garbage days of Christmas

The timing sucks. Oh, well.

Last week there were a couple of good ideas. Alas, the Londoner only publishes weekly and one can only hope that the story keeps it’s legs. This is part of the cartoon I did Thursday evening for submission Friday, based on a story from November 17th’s London Free Press by Jonathan Sher;

City hall nemesis Allan Patton is threatening to go to the Ontario Municipal Board if his client, developer Vito Frijia, isn’t issued a permit to cut down most of a woodland. While Patton must wait until Dec. 1 to file an appeal, he says he’ll do so unless Frijia is given the green light to cut acres of trees that residents are fighting to preserve. “If the city doesn’t issue a permit by month’s end, the appeal will be in the OMB office in Toronto the next day by courier,” Patton said yesterday. As threats go, that’s a [concern] along Adelaide Street north of Windermere Road for residents who can’t bear losing a woodland that’s larger than 10 football fields. Many are chagrined Frijia plans to use the property for a driving range when there is one practically across the street.

Then this story; $700,000 deal may save woods shows up in this days (Friday’s) paper and spins a very different polish on the apple.

The fight to save a north London woodland from a developer’s axe and a future as a driving range took a major turn this week when city council voted behind doors to offer $700,000-plus to the developer

We’re not out of the woods and onto the green just yet. Alan Patton appears in  Developer Magazine debut and Vito Frijia in Mine! Not Yours! Mine!.

Good Old-fashioned Developer Love Comics

Update : September 2012 This post is consistently the top hit count for this blog, even up until the present. I suspect it has more to do with “Love” and “Comics” as keywords in the title. I have coloured a version and set it up as a poster, postcards, greeting cards and notecards on the samu press store.

Let’s start a Farm!