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© Clive Doucet 2007

Ottawa Needs a Municipal Environmental Office

September 15, 2005

In the beginning,
there was the word.
The aboriginal peoples are right.
We name and sing our lives into existence.
We understand God
by naming things.
(from Soul Stones)

The environment is on people’s minds. At the last two "Coffee with Clive" sessions, I have had two different people show up with concerns about the environment. The first was a doctor from the College of Physicians and Surgeons who was really concerned for the need to create an integrated environmental plan to reduce pollution and global warming. When looked at from his perspective he saw a lot of individual efforts in different areas. But what really worried him was the lack any integration or common front between the national, provincial and local levels of government. He gave me a number of examples of this lack of integration.

Another gentleman from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency talked about the problem of food supply with gasoline doubling and tripling in cost. He pointed out that for every calorie of food you eat it takes 10 calories of energy mostly from fossil fuels to produce that food. This energy consumption didn’t exist 40 years ago. Petroleum products are essential ingredients in pesticides and herbicides. Natural gas byproducts are used in fertilizers. Diesel or gas runs the machines that plant and harvest as well as transport food across the continent. His point was that it is not sustainable in the future. We will not be able to import most of our food from so far away. We will need to produce more food locally yet local agricultural land is being lost to sprawl development. Both these men struck a cord with me because I remember Ottawa 40 years ago when the city was roughly half the size it now and when the bulk of food available (vegetables, dairy products and meat) was largely local.

Both these men were worried about the trends and where the city is going. I share their concern because I see this problem everyday at the city. We have no environmental implementation capacity. We have no environmental implementation branch. We can’t even measure the heat produced by the sun heating asphalt in the summer. It was so hot this past summer that asphalt melted on the Mackenzie King bridge. How can we properly evaluate transportation alternatives if we don’t understand their environmental impact. For example, what are the implications for local asthma patients of local pollution? We have no senior environmental professionals to advise the city’s medical officer on disease implications.

These things are not easy to resolve. They require us to rethink the "tried and true" methods of growing our city which are giving us sprawl and big box stores. In the end we may need a moratorium on road building and to invest in electric light rail powered locally from the Chaudiere Falls. Remember how a couple of years ago a brownout in Ohio took out our entire electrical system? No matter what happens internationally we should be able to supply our basic food and energy needs.

It isn’t easy to change. Even changing sidewalks for the better is difficult. Our old roller coaster (up, down and tilted at each driveway) sidewalks when iced up with last winter’s rain then freeze, kept people confined for weeks on end last winter. We have a new sidewalk design that provides a continuous flat surface and a slightly steeper ramp on the outside edge to shed water and ice better. Evidence on Holland and Delaware from last winter is that these new sidewalks are safer and easier to maintain but getting public acceptance for them is not easy.

There is a big difference between setting planning goals and making them a reality. Big box stores surrounded by asphalt are cheap and quick in the short term but have high long term costs. Whereas, traditional main streets cost less in the long term but are a hard sell in the short run. The question is how do we get elected officials, city staff and the public thinking long term.

Maybe the gift of New Orleans to the rest of North America will be the realization that the cost of draining wetlands and paving them over creates an environment which has no natural defenses against weather events. This is an environment in which ordinary people eventually pay a huge price. I will be putting forward a proposal for an Environmental Implementation Branch (EIB), which will report to the City’s Medical Officer. It will be an important first step in making change happen in Ottawa.

Coffee with Clive
My monthly drop-in chat sessions are held throughout the Ward, each week in a different neighbourhood. Click here for details.