Runway addition may go to OMB
Posted By Chad Ingram
Posted 7 months ago
The expansion of the Stanhope Airport may find its way to an Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing, according the reeve of Algonquin Highlands.
On Jan. 6, Algonquin Highlands councillors met with the township's legal counsel for a closed meeting.
"Council will proceed in-camera to receive information pertinent to litigation or potential litigation affecting the municipality and to receive advice subject to solicitor-client privilege related to the previous expropriation of lands adjacent to the Haliburton Stanhope Airport and located at Lot 31, Concession 6, geographic township of Stanhope," a message from the township's clerk read.
This lot is on property owned by the Middleton family, who were not available for comment.
While Reeve Eleanor Harrison said she could not repeat anything that had been discussed during last week's in-camera meeting, she did confirm that the township's legal counsel and its chief administrative officer would be travelling to Toronto for a mediation trial on Jan. 19.
Harrison said depending on what happens during mediation, there could be a full OMB hearing in Algonquin Highlands council chambers in early February.
In order for an additional 1,220-metre runway at the airport to operate, a number of old-growth trees surrounding the airport must be "topped" – or have up to 13 metres of their trunks cut.
The township has made offers to surrounding landowners to buy "vegetative rights" but councillors have said the Ontario Municipal Act allows the township to expropriate lands necessary for the operation of the runway if so required.
One affected property owner is actually a resident of Dysart et al township and while Algonquin Highlands has offered him $10,000 for the rights to cut his trees, he countered the offer at a half-million dollars. While Harrison has said she believes the act allows council to expropriate lands in a bordering township if necessary, the property owner believes the township would need permission from Dysart et al council.
It is still unclear whether or not the controversial project will be able to proceed, since a environmental screening assessment must first be completed at the site.
While that assessment, being carried out by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, began in October according the agency's website, the Times has been unable to gain any information about the process.
Numerous calls to the media department at Infrastructure Canada, the agency responsible for overseeing the project, have yielded no responses.
The township and the Maple Beech and Cameron Lakes Area Property Owners' Association, which strongly opposes the expansion, have also been unable to gain information about how the assessment is going. Two thirds of the project, which could cost up to $3.6 million, is being funded by the provincial and federal governments through the Building Canada Fund. The township risks losing that funding if the project is not completed by February of 2011.
