A small crowd gathered at the Greenbank Hall last week to hear directly from the new owners of the Greenbank Airport, regarding upcoming developments at the property that will see 2.5 million cubic metres of fill trucked into the rural aviation facility.
The open-house format meeting, organized by the airport’s owners at the request of the township, was intended to answer questions and address concerns that local residents may have about the facility’s expansion.
Airport officials have previously stated that the expansion will involve extending one of the Hwy. 47 airport’s two runways from 2,200 ft. up to 2,800 ft., requiring a large amount of fill to raise the elevation at the southern end of the property. Plans are also in place for additional hangars and an expanded landing area for emergency and police helicopters. Additional services such as flight training are planned for the facility in the near future.
The project is estimated to take between two and three years, requiring 2.5 million cubic metres of fill.
According to a recent township staff report, airport officials presented an application for a site alteration permit to the township on April 10, preceded by several meetings between municipal staff and airport representatives. However, as the airport is a licensed aviation facility, the majority of the work will likely fall under the jurisdiction of Transport Canada.
“Change is going to happen, and it can cause concern in a community,” said Keith Beard, a consultant working on behalf of the airport owners who reiterated the federal jurisdiction of aviation matters during a brief presentation. The meeting saw representatives from the airport, the township and the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) responding to inquiries from residents about the project.
“Obviously, with great change you get resistance,” said Doug Ronan of COPA, adding that with the impending closure of Buttonville Airport in Markham, there is a need for additional aviation facilities.
“I don’t believe this airport could get big enough to cause concern - WestJet certainly won’t be coming here. If anything, the community will benefit from the expansion.”
However, several concerns have been raised by residents about the airport expansion.
A number of residents gathered at the meeting told The Standard that they were opposed to the project, questioning the necessity and purpose of the expansion as well as the impact to the local community, due to the possibility of more and larger planes landing at the facility, as well as increased truck traffic and the potential impact to local infrastructure as a result.
“This airport will never be a mega facility,” said Mr. Beard at one point in the meeting. “But moving the airport to ‘the next size up’ will make it economically viable. Airports make great neighbours - they generate their own economy.”
Mr. Beard reiterated that statement by citing a figure that on average, airports generate five additional jobs in the community for each position at a given facility. However, he did not explain whether that statistic applies to all airports or only those of a certain size.
In his address to the meeting, Scugog Mayor Chuck Mercier acknowledged the limited role of the township in the project, but commended airport officials with coming to the municipal table to discuss the project and submitting a site alteration application.
“We became aware of the property through an open house back in February,” “I said ‘you made one mistake - you should have come to the township first,’ as we’ve been dealing with a similar issue over the last few years,” the mayor told the audience, referring to the recent commercial fill battle which took place between the township and Earthworx Industries.
With the amount of earth needed for the airport expansion, concerns have been raised in the community regarding the quality of soil and potential environmental impacts of a project requiring so much imported soil.
At the meeting, airport owner Bob Munshaw could not provide a fill source when questioned by residents, offering only that there are “all kinds of excavation projects going on” from which the soil could originate, adding that conducting between 20 to30 soil tests a day, as requested by one resident, would be “ridiculous.”
Mr. Munshaw has stated that results from soil tests, to be conducted by DLS Group (a company which was also hired to conduct tests at the Earthworx site on Lakeridge Rd.), will be posted on the airport’s web site as they become available.
“We haven’t said no to one single thing that the township has put forward,” said Mr. Munshaw, referring to recent discussions with municipal staff. “The township will be satisfied that the Greenbank Airport will comply with the (site alteration) bylaw.”
At the May 14 Scugog Council meeting, Public Works director Ian Roger told councillors that it would “not be practical to test every load coming in” to the airport during the expansion project.
“Some random samples will taken, but we won’t test every truckload,” said Mr. Roger. “We’ll be relying on the source QP (qualified person - who will monitor soil as its extracted) that it is clean.”
_Responded Ward 5 Councillor Howard Danson at the May 14 meeting: “I have some reservations about that.”
Additionally, a number of ties between the airport and the commercial fill industry have come into question.
When questioned at the recent meeting by a local resident about those connections, Mr. Munshaw alleged articles previously published in The Standard were incorrect.
Mr. Munshaw also works for Green For Life, the waste and soil remediation business that treated fill destined for the Earthworx Industries site on Lakeridge Rd. In a search of a federal database of Canadian businesses, the Port Perry home of Earthworx VP Gord Churchill is also listed as the business address of 2307880 Ontario Inc., the numbered company that purchased the airport last December, which also counts Mr. Munshaw as president and director.
_This information was confirmed to The Standard by Mr. Munshaw in a previous interview, stating that Mr. Churchill’s address was used for accounting purposes, as his wife had initially been “doing the books” for the numbered company involved in the airport purchase. Any further involvement of Earthworx in the airport project has not been confirmed. However, Mr. Munshaw has also said previously that there have been talks about the possible re-location of hangar buildings from the Earthworx site on Lakeridge Rd. to Greenbank, and at the airport’s February open house, stated that he would not rule out working with Earthworx on the airport expansion. The airport expansion has also raised concerns in Uxbridge Township, where Hwy. 47 leads into that community’s downtown. Last week, Uxbridge councillors passed a resolution requesting that the Region of Durham pass a by-law to prohibit heavy commercial truck traffic within Uxbridge’s economic hub and historic downtown corridor, citing the future work at the airport in the decision.
According to figures provided by Uxbridge Township, the estimated number of trucks travelling to the airport each day would equate to one truck passing through the downtown every 36 seconds during a normal eight-hour work day. In addition to the wear and tear such traffic would have on the township’s already-deteriorating roadways, there are concerns present with an increase in truck traffic.
Another staff report on the airport’s site alteration bylaw will be presented at Scugog Council’s May 28 committees meeting, during which the public may provide comment. A final staff report on the application is expected to come before council on June 4.
- with files from Darryl Knight
Source: http://www.thescugogstandard.ca
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment