The Department of Environment and Local Government (ELG) has asked Atlantic Industries Ltd. (AIL) for more information about their planned factory for 318 Walker Road in order to make a decision on whether the project will require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
ELG communications director Anne Mooers said via email that the department is currently waiting for further information before they can complete the screening process for an EIA.
AIL has applied to Plan360 for a permit to regrade the site which is waiting on engineering approval, according to planner Lori Bickford. Despite the wait, plenty of action has been happening on the site, with dump trucks hauling in loads and heavy equipment working on the site.
At a Sackville town council meeting on Tuesday, a neighbour of a the proposed plastic and steel pipe factory asked council to reconsider the decision that made way for the development.
The factory is permitted under the town’s current zoning by-law, but it wasn’t just a few months ago. In April, council amended its zoning bylaw to allow for development in an industrial zone without requiring a connection to town water and sewer. The amended plan applies to the entire Walker Road industrial zone, which itself is relatively new to Sackville’s plan, added in 2008 after a municipal plan review.
Resident Matt Litvak told council on Tuesday that their April decision to make way for development in the Walker Road industrial zone could have “tremendous ramifications to our town,” and he asked councillors to revisit the zoning bylaw with another amendment to undo what they had done.
A good part of Tuesday’s discussion centred on whether or not council did indeed have the power to again amend its zoning bylaw, and effectively reverse its recent decision. CAO Jamie Burke told council that because a developer is currently acting under the existing zone, he thought it would be legally questionable to make a change preventing that development now.
“If those weren’t the circumstances at play, and we didn’t have anybody who was kind of knocking on the door, and we weren’t going to stifle a particular development, that may be different,” said Burke.
Litvak was surprised and disappointed at that answer. “Even if it was a mistake?” he asked. “You can’t back up out of a mistake?”
Councillor Bill Evans attempted to further explain. “We can amend the [bylaw], but we can’t amend it retroactively,” he said. “The bylaw as it stands has been met by the applicant. Nothing that we do now can undo that. It would be illegal for us to retroactively say, ‘what you did legitimately is now illegal.’”
Matt Litvak’s presentation on Tuesday included a number of concerns, some of which might factor into the province’s assessment of the proposed factory.
Many of those concerns had been brought up in a letter from concerned citizens to council, and included the possibility of water draw down for the other wells in the area, air quality due to plastics molding procedures, and the fire department’s ability to handle a plastics fire.
Burke responded that the municipality’s consideration focussed on land use, and that the environmental concerns of local residents could be addressed, but by the provincial department of environment, not the town of Sackville
“The land use, rightly or wrongly, that is proposed is permitted in the zone in which it lies,” said Burke. “All the developer needs to obtain to put a building on that lot is a building permit and a development permit. There will be other requirements that AIL has to meet that are regulated by the department of environment, not by the town of Sackville, particularly with respect to air quality and the aquifer issues that Mr. Litvak has alluded to tonight,” said Burke.
Another key issue raised by Litvak was the lack of notification in advance of the zoning bylaw change that made way for the factory. Litvak pointed out that there was only a posting under a special section of the town’s website, and other communications methods normally used by the town were not employed.
Litvak offered up suggestions including posting notices on affected properties, using the video board at the Civic Centre to alert people to new notices, using the town’s existing social media channels, and notifying residents through the town’s newsletter.
In the newsletter, Litvak commented that, “every department in town talks about past, present and future activities. The only department that doesn’t is a town council. You only talk about what’s happened, not what you’re working on, or what you’re going to be working on in the future. I think that would be a really good way to get the town involved and notified as to what’s happening in their town.”
A number of councillors and CAO Jamie Burke agreed that the notification in advance of bylaw changes could be improved, though there was also discussion of limitations embedded in the Community Planning Act of the province.
The act says that municipalities may inform residents of possible bylaw changes either by publishing a notice in a local newspaper, or by posting on its website. If there’s to be a site specific re-zoning, then they need to either post a notice on the property itself, or send notification to all neighbours within 100 metres.
“There’s some options built into the legislation,” says Burke, “a very limited number of options.”
“I could stand to be corrected, but it’s certainly not my experience that there are municipalities in New Brunswick who would go outside of the prescribed statutory requirements and introduce new public engagement requirements on a developer,” said Burke.
The one notification option mentioned in the Community Planning Act, but not used by the town of Sackville, is social media. The act says that municipalities can, if a notice is posted on their website or in a newspaper, also post it on social media.
Litvak said that more transparency and proactive engagement could prevent issues and controversies for council down the line.
“You need to have full disclosure on what’s really happening,” Litvak told council. “Because what happened in that meeting… it wasn’t indicated that there was an industrial site going in there, that was going to be plastics plant. When you do that, when you don’t inform the public, then you get an opportunity for uncertainty, for rumours to develop, and for conspiracy theories. And I think everybody’s had enough of that.”
