A new report on the Ramsey Lake subwatershed has added fuel to the anti-KED fire, with the Minnow Lake Restoration Group citing it as further evidence the project should not proceed.
“It is extremely frustrating subject matter,” said Brad Bowman, a senior environmental scientist with Linquist Aquatic Consulting and a board member and technical advisor with the Minnow Lake Restoration Group.
“We’ve crossed a threshold,” he added. “To protect the lake, we really can’t have any more development in the watershed. That’s a fundamental shift in philosophy and … becomes a major development constraint.”
The report in question is the Ramsey Lake Subwatershed Study and Master Plan, which was finalized last month, commissioned by the City of Greater Sudbury with provincial funding and prepared by Aquafor Beech Ltd.
The Kingsway Entertainment District will be located on a Significant Groundwater Recharge Area located at the headwaters of Eugene Creek, which flows into Ramsey Lake.
The KED is a municipal arena project located off of The Kingsway and is slated to also include a private casino by Gateway Casinos and a hotel owned and operated by Genesis Hospitality.
According to the Master Plan, this development will increase runoff “due to both an increase in imperviousness and reduction in (evapotranspiration),” which is the combination of evaporation and transpiration (water movement through plants).
Although the report doesn’t anticipate any “major changes to the overall water budget under the future land use conditions,” there will be an anticipated “measurable impact” as a result of the KED. A water budget is an accounting of water stored and exchanged in a prescribed area.
“The enhanced runoff from the upland areas may locally increase downslope groundwater recharge, and the water quality of the runoff may be detrimental to the ecology of the headwaters if the runoff contains road salt,” according to the report.
The road salt issue is only anticipated to become a greater concern as a result of climate change, according to the report.
As it stands, salt is not applied in temperatures of -12 C and colder, but a climate change forecast cited in the report notes that winter temperatures could become 3.5 C warmer than historical trends.
“This will likely result in higher salt application rates, emphasizing the importance of implementing salt best management practices.”
Road salt has been an ongoing concern at Ramsey Lake, where sodium and chloride levels are great enough to impact the health of human and aquatic life. The lake supplies the South End, West End and some of downtown with drinking water – approximately 40 per cent of the urban water supply.
“From an engineering perspective, there are technical solutions that can be afforded (to mitigate environmental impacts), and they will not address the road salt issue,” Bowman said – a point city engineering services director David Shelsted supports.
“We would be providing water to all of the world if you came up with a cost-effective way to get salt out of water,” he said, adding that the city’s key means of tackling the road salt issue is to apply as little as possible.
“The concerns are valid. We have salt impacting our lakes, and it’s one of our natural resources as a community,” he said. “It’s a jewel and we want to maintain them in a healthy state.”
As with other municipal parking lots, those associated with the KED will be sanded and not salted. The ring road encircling the property is likely to be salted due to traffic volume.
Giving the property even greater context, Shelsted noted that it was previously zoned as industrial, with its current zoning to accommodate the KED “one of the least impactful developments you can have” at the property.
That said, the city has also taken topography into account while planning the development.
“We’re trying to match what natural environment is there with the development plan we have,” Shelsted said, noting that the buildings and parking lots will be located where there is bare bedrock, and the stormwater management pond will be located in the groundwater recharge area at the southeast of the property.
The stormwater management pond will be an “infiltration pond,” which he said filters stormwater through a weeping tile-style system before it flows downstream to Ramsey Lake. Although this has little impact on road salts, it’s designed to pick up things such as sediment and oil.
A temporary stormwater management pond will be in operation during construction and a permanent structure will be in place by the time the KED opens.
Although the Minnow Lake Restoration Group’s ongoing court challenge against the KED relates to alleged breach in procedure by city staff and council, their concern with the project centres mainly on its potential impacts on the environment.
In conversation with Sudbury.com, Bowman clarified that in addition to his environmental concerns, he’s opposed to the casino portion and questions the project’s financial viability.
As for his environmental concerns, which he said the Master Plan further validates, Bowman said that although the KED will have a negative impact on the watershed, efforts to clean the lake or prevent contaminants from entering it might help offset some of its impacts.
“It’s an accounting exercise,” he said, pointing to the city’s stormwater management practices as falling well short of where they should be. “Gain some here, lose some here.”
The city’s stormwater assets are currently underfunded by approximately $5.2 million per year – a gap the city is striving to fill.
Although Shelsted said the city tries to exceed environmental requirements with the projects they undertake, the KED will adhere to at least the same regulations and permits that all other projects must within the municipality.
This includes following an approved risk management plan, which is required for vulnerable areas in order to mitigate environmental impacts. An initial plan for the KED was approved in 2018 and will need to be reapplied for when the detailed design-build plan is finalized.
The 2018 risk management plan included plans on how to store road salt and manage other potential environmental risks, including following best practices. Some of these best practices, according to a preliminary report on the risk management plan by Dillon Consulting, include:
- The identification of traffic areas and sensitive features that may provide an opportunity for increased infiltration of salt into the subsurface or that may need to be protected.
- The identification of snow storage areas and the transport of snow from these areas to approved snow dump facilities.
- Consideration of alternatives to the use of road salt, or lower sodium concentrations, such as the application of sand, where it is safe and effective to do so.
- Engineering measures, such as on-site grading and the location of roof downspouts to reduce ice formation and the use of fencing and vegetation to minimize snow drifting.
- A winter operations plan with measures to minimize the use of road salt including details on the amount of salt to be stored on-site, the maintenance and washing of snow removal equipment to occur offsite, monitoring of weather conditions to remove snow quickly after snowfall events, and limiting the use of road salt.
- Ongoing monitoring and management through logging winter maintenance activities, including the amount of road salt used and the creation of a baseline winter maintenance conditions at the site to identify opportunities for improvement.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
