Story

If ever there was land on the Oak Ridges Moraine and within the Greenbelt in need of protection from development, this is it.

A developer wants to build a large residential development south and west of Kingscross Estates in King City (over 300 homes). The land has steep slopes down to the terminus section of the largest Provincially Significant Wetland in southern Ontario and streams draining into the East Humber River.  The developer does not like/want the sandy soil, so they are planning extensive cut/removal and import fill operations. There is a forested area with large trees, some more than a metre in diameter and over 50 feet tall, that will be cut down.

We, the citizens of King Township under the umbrella of the Kingscross Ratepayers Association (KRA) are working with the Small Change Fund to save the wetlands the streams and the trees.  To do so, we signed up as a party to the developers appeal to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, formerly known as the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board).

But we need your financial support.  Please donate today!

There is a vernal pool wetland on the north side of the property – a seasonally wet wetland that frogs and salamanders breed in annually.  The applicants want to relocate this wetland to the west. Who is going to tell the large community of three frog species to move out? The frogs have it ingrained in their DNA to return to this safe breeding location annually.

To demonstrate that this should not be allowed requires expert opinion. And that is costly.

The applicants want to build a road connecting this new development to Manitou Drive.

To do that the developer plans to use “engineered fill” to build a road across what is a very steep unstable slope (admitted in their own soil engineers report) down to the East Humber River. That road would also cut through a connecting corridor of trees.

We do not want a connecting road for these reasons and in addition, we know it will be used as a short cut from Keele St. to Jane St to the 400, by-passing the congested intersection of King Rd & Keele St. We already get through traffic when the 400 is blocked.

Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) has said that part of Manitou Dr. is below the floodplain (neighbours can testify to that) and that it cannot be designated as an emergency route. But the last time we met with the developer they said that road is 2 M above the floodplain.

Again, we need an expert hydrologist’s opinion to be able to demonstrate just where the floodplain actually is. Your donation will pay for that expertise.

And we need an ecologist to provide a report on the important ecological values of this land, trees and the impact of destroying wetlands, extensive cut and fill operations to level the steep slopes and to replace the soft sandy soils that allow rainfall replenishment of local groundwater supply down into the streams, wetlands and the East Humber River. Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry has placed water level monitors in the wetlands but what will happen if the wetlands dry up after all this proposed construction, including dewatering takes place? There is no recourse when adjacent private wells dry up, except paying for poor quality water delivered by trucks.

Do we want ALL this?

This is a tragedy in the making.

Help us retain the experts needed to turn the area into the Conservation Reserve that it should be.