I have been asked to provide an update with respect to the Yellow Moon development located at the corner of Port Union Road and Lawrence.
To refresh everyone's memory, Yellow Moon purchased the property from Manson Insulation and proceeded in 1999 to the Ontario Municipal Board where they requested permission to build 214 homes on the said property. Permission was given to build homes conditional on the developer cleaning up the land of any and all (asbestos) industrial waste.
The cleanup of the site commenced approximately 3 years ago and was somewhat overseen by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of the Environment. The government agencies did periodic site inspections and reviewed the environmental documentation submitted by Yellow Moon. In addition the City chaired a Public Review Committee (in which the CCRA and other interested parties were part of) to help disseminate the environmental information as to how the factory was to be safely torn down and the land was to be cleaned.
On May 29, 2003, the Ministry Environment sent a letter to Yellow Moon Homes, that stated as follows: "we have completed our audit of the record of site condition for the site….we are satisfied that the assessment and restoration of the site had been carried out in accordance with the guidelines for use of contaminated sites in Ontario." The CCRA received the letter in the latter part of August. In the meantime Yellow Moon had requested the OMB to proceed with its application and a preliminary OMB Hearing was scheduled for September 10, 2003, with the main hearing being scheduled for January 5, 2004. I would suspect that sometime very early in the New Year Yellow Moon will start to sell its homes. As a point of interest the west side of Port union south of Lawrence is to be zoned for commercial mixed uses.
I attended the preliminary O.M.B. Hearing on behalf of the C.C.R.A. The Ontario Municipal Board Chair person took the position that since the Ministry of the Environment was satisfied that the land was now clean there would be no environmental issues dealt with by the Board and as such issued an order excluding any environmental concerns. I believe the Board's position was very short sighted. Regardless after reporting back to the Executive it became patently obvious that despite our disagreement with the OMB's order should the C.C.R.A. proceed it might find itself at risk for legal costs. As such the CCRA prudently withdrew from the Hearing.
By: Joseph Pileggi