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Laurentian University’s has emerged from the CCAA insolvency status, but the risk of collateral damage continues.
In its efforts to pay down debts, Laurentian University, a public institution, still lists its 283 hectares of public property among its assets to be sold off. However, we need to remember that this area began as public land that, through significant investments of time and money from researchers, students and citizen volunteers, and became an ecological miracle.
It has grown into a precious resource that will lose its value even if only some of it were to be monetized.
Instead, we need to take an environmental and Indigenous perspective that, in gratitude, values the land as having its own purpose deserving of respect and care.
What has become known as the LU greenspace was once part of the industrialized moonscape in the Sudbury basin. This restoration work has garnered international accolades for university researchers in the area of distressed terrestrial and aquatic ecological systems. Notwithstanding their stellar reputation, the environmental program at Laurentian was unceremoniously axed along with 68 other programs through the CCAA procedures.
Whereas faculty and buildings could theoretically be replaced, the loss of greenspace would be an unrecoverable blow for the entire community.
The LU land is part of an ecosystem and, as such, functions holistically. It consists of two watersheds connected with the Nickel District Conservation Authority area and beyond.
This regenerated ecosystem now serves the community and the university in so many ways. It has gotten to the point that it has become (almost) self-sustaining. Its valuable trails and pathways in the winter and summer are well-loved and used by the whole community. Wildlife and plants native to this area thrive in this forested corridor.
Just as the university recognizes that it must reconstitute its programs into a viable academically recognized whole, so too should this greenspace be understood as a functional ecosystem as long as it remains intact.
Natural processes guide its growth and stability on its rocky outcroppings. Its tiny rivulets and system of roots slow down water run-off and prevent soil and other contaminants from entering Lakes Nepahwin and Ramsey. The soil that would otherwise enter the lake contains phosphorus that contributes to the production of the toxin cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae. Lake Ramsey’s water quality is critical for the city’s water supply and necessary for recreational activities. As the climate crisis worsens, the city will be more and more dependent on the filtration properties of the greenspace.
This public greenspace is one part of the past that Laurentian University and Sudbury can proudly bring into the future. Chastened by the devastation caused by the CCAA process, the university needs to see that we cannot have our reconstituted ecosystem with its many benefits and cut it up too.
Let us not sacrifice what has become such a success story for the university for its key role in the restoration of the greenspace so central to the community’s health and wellbeing. The university, since it has been restored to functioning as a public institution, can now be held accountable to it by keeping this land intact and open to the public.
Elaine Porter
Greater Sudbury