The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary (RNC) is seeking the public’s assistance in relation to a hit and run motor vehicle pedestrian collision that occurred on Park Avenue in Mount Pearl.
On August 8, sometime between 4:30 a.m. and 5:20 a.m., a pedestrian was walking across the crosswalk on Park Avenue near Worrell Drive when she was struck by a white Chevrolet Impala. The run vehicle was travelling north at the time of the collision.
The 33 year old female victim was taken to hospital where she was treated and released. The operator failed to stop at the scene of the accident.
Anyone who has any information in relation to the collision is asked to contact the RNC at 729-8000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). You can also provide information anonymously on the NL Crime Stoppers Website at www.nlcrimestoppers.com.
Community gardens taking root
At least two new community gardens are off to a strong start, despite the unseasonal summer weather, thanks to hard work by Mount Pearl’s Green Team and its collaboration with a couple of community partners.
At the Parish of the Good Shepherd on Richard Nolan Drive, the Green Team is busy building growing beds, which Archdeacon Charlene Taylor is offering to share with anyone in the community who would like to try their hand at growing local produce.
The team has also set up four growing beds at Hillcrest Estates, the senior citizens home on Mount Carson Avenue for residents there to use.
The latter project is part of the Conservation Corps of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Growing Through the Ages program. The Green Team is administered by the Conservation Corps but assigned to the City of Mount Pearl for direction. The City decided the Green Team would be a great tool for helping local groups cultivate the idea of starting community gardens.
Green Team Leader Heather Reid said the Conservation Corps has presented the City with 10 pre-made growing beds, which the City is distributing throughout the community. At Hillcrest Estates, the idea is to encourage seniors to become healthier and more active. The site for the remaining six growing beds has yet to be determined.
The Growing Through the Ages project is separate from the one at the Parish of the Good Shepherd, which is an early adoptee of the community garden idea.
“They already had an idea of what they wanted,” said Reid, referring to the Parish. “They already had a plan and Provincial Health and Wellness Grant to get it going. So the City decided to kind of ‘give us’ to them because they already had the ball rolling so well and they had such a clear vision. So we’ve been working with them and learning from them and helping them by doing the manual labour and giving advice.”
Reid, a masters student in geography, has a background in agriculture, having worked for two years on an organic farm in Ontario.
“We’ve been helping them out as best as we can and things have been coming together so quickly,” Reid said. “It just speaks volumes about how well the Parish works together and how clear the vision is about getting this community garden.”
Because it’s already into late summer, the parish is looking at concentrating its efforts on greens – lettuce, spinach, perhaps some turnip tops - that can be grown and harvested by the fall.
Reid said it’s not too late to plant some crops. “Because it’s been cool, it’s actually a great temperature to start growing spinach,” she explained. “Arugula still grows (this time of year), basically all of your greens are still going to grow, assuming we don’t get an early frost. The only things that are not going to grow (if you plant them) now are onions, or any kind of root vegetable or cabbage, or anything like that is now going to grow super well. But we’re hoping to get some lettuce planted next week and it’s never too late for turnip tops.”
Next year the plan is to expand the range of produce to help supply the weekly café that the Parish operates. But most of the beds are available to families, or groups who want to care for a bed. “On a first come, first served basis, at no cost, they’re opening it up to people in the neighborhood and throughout the city to come and adopt a bed and get their hands dirty, basically,” Reid said.
“They’ve been phenomenal,” Reid said of the Parish. “Words cannot express how great the church has been to us, so supportive. It’s been a wonderful place to partner with.”
Archdeacon Taylor said the Parish got interested it the idea of a community garden last year, because it would complement its weekly café and seemed like a good thing to do for the community. “And as you can see, we have lots of land,” Taylor said. “So we researched it to see what we would have to do.”
The timing was great. Around the same time the parish was researching community gardens, the provincial government called for proposals from groups looking for grants of up to $10,000. “We thought, ‘Let’s see if they will fund the start up for our community garden?’” Taylor said. “And we were fortunate enough to get $8,000. That has given us the starting money… all the material for making the beds, the lumber, the soil, all the tools we need, seeds… we bought all of that out of the grant money.”
Taylor said the church is going to use only two of the beds for itself. “We can use lettuce and spinach and some of the produce in our own kitchen – we serve a hot lunch program every Wednesday here that is free to the community and all walks of life.”
The Church feeds some 120 to 140 people every Wednesday at the café.
The other beds are available to whoever would like to adopt one. “We’ve already put out notices and bulletins to the surrounding neighbourhood for any family or groups of people who would like to come and adopt a bed and plant their own things,” Taylor said. “It’s really for the community, any parishioners or anyone in the neighbourhood who wants to dabble in growing some stuff.”
Anyone who is interested in taking on a bed can call the church at 747-1022.
Taylor is looking forward to celebrating this year’s harvest in the fall and to future harvests. “This will be an ongoing thing now,” she said. “The biggest work was getting it going, prepping the land and building the beds and all that kind of thing. Now that that’s ready, it’s here for perpetuity for whoever wants to be part of it. That’s the plan.”
City orders more homework on Glendale condos
It looks like concerns raised by residents living near the proposed site of a condominium complex at 16–24 Glendale Avenue is causing the City of Mount Pearl to ask more questions of its own.
The City will have to rezone the area to Residential High Density to accommodate the project by Gibraltar Developments. But given the feedback at a public briefing session last month, the City’s Development Department is recommending a study into some of the residents’ concerns, which range from a loss of privacy and lowering of property values to increased traffic and strain on the water and sewer system.
Planning and Development Committee chairman Andrew Ledwell said some of the concerns focused on the height and size of the proposed building and how it will affect the view planes of residents, not only on Glendale Avenue, but Castors Drive and Blade Crescent as well.
Ledwell added some people are also concerned about increased traffic on Glendale Avenue and the immediate streets around the proposed development, as well as on Commonwealth Avenue, First Street and Ruth Avenue. Some residents say that area is already congested.
“Finally there were also some concerns surrounding the ability of our municipal infrastructure to service the particular development and the impact of the proposed development on the Waterford River,” Ledwell said. “So at this stage in the process the Planning and Development Department proposes to undertake some further analysis on all of these areas. This analysis is going to be conducted as quickly as possible and certainly will be brought back to council for consideration before any type of decision is made on the rezoning process… The Planning and Development committee has discussed this at length and we certainly recommend that this analysis take place.”
Ledwell said the City will hire an independent consultant to review the height of the proposed complex and determine the effect on the neighbourhood’s sightlines. “In terms of property values, it’s proposed that an independent, professional appraiser be engaged to conduct a study on the property values in the Glendale area but also on Castors and Blade,” he said. “It’s also proposed that we would engage a real estate agent to be consulted.”
In terms of traffic concerns, Ledwell said the City will ensure the streets in the area are included in a traffic study that is already underway in Mount Pearl.
Mayor Randy Simms said he was aware of the recommendation concerning building height and noted the height that was advertised in the paper, which had it as some three-and-a-half to four stories, was incorrect, because a section of the building will be four stories high. “So having the independent professional undertake that review seems to make sense,” he said.
But Simms said he was not aware the additional analysis of the project would involve the larger traffic study, which is already underway. “And I’m concerned about the amount of time involved,” he said.
Simms asked the Director of Infrastructure and Public Works, Gerald Antle, whether he could give a firm date for the study’s completion.
“No, I cannot,” Antle admitted.
The director explained the traffic study is merely in phase one, which includes gathering all the information the City has on traffic matters in Mount Pearl. The next part will involve analysis of that material and a determination of what information will be needed to complete the study, “which is phase two,” he said.
Antle said the City reviewed the traffic information contained with Gibraltar’s development application “and we didn’t see those impacts as being significant.”
As for the potential impact on traffic outside that immediate area, Antle said that will have to be part of the larger study being done by the City. “But to set a time frame on that?” he said. “I think our overall traffic study is somewhere in the next year.”
That led Simms to ask if the Planning committee intends on recommending the proposed development go on hold for a year until the traffic study is done. Simms said he would like to write the residents in the area to inform them of the process that is being followed and the timeline for the analysis.
Planning and Development Direct Stephen Jewczyk indicated the timeline, and the additional analysis, won’t be as broad as the mayor fears. Some of the information will be available from the City’s own departments, he explained, and the question of whether there will be additional traffic congestion can be assessed by obtaining information from the developer.
Pressed by Simms for a firmer timeline on the completion of that work, Jewczyk said “definitely within a couple of months.”
Councillor John Walsh acknowledged the City has seen a couple of contentious developments recently, including a proposed seniors’ condominium complex on Municipal Avenue. “But I just want to say for the record and for the information of the public… and it almost doesn’t need to be said, but it seems like people lose faith in terms of the process or what we do, but does anyone in their right mind think we would actually approve a project in the City of Mount Pearl wherein there is not sufficient water and sewer capacity to handle a development?”
Walsh said the City has held up developments because additional infrastructure was needed. “I just want to restore public confidence,” he said. “In terms of whether there is sufficient water and sewer capacity, we can say unequivocally there is sufficient capacity. If there wasn’t, we would never be able to recommend this for approval. That’s the end of the discussion on that as far as I’m concerned.”
Pearlgate Club performs strongly in Atlantic meet
Athletes from the Pearlgate Track and Field Club made their presence known at the Atlantic championships held in Prince Edward Island last weekend, winning 22 medals and finishing as the fifth best club among 22 groups competing at the meet.
“The whole event was a perfect step up for us from the competitive level that we typically see in out track meets,” said one of the coaches accompanying the team, Mark Miller. “It’s a perfect warmup for our athletes to get ready for the Legion National. It was a really competitive event and I think we surprised a lot of people up there.”
Surprisingly, the weather in PEI was as bad as that home. “It was like 15 degrees and drizzle most days,” Miller said. “And the wind was actually pretty strong on Sunday.”
The inclement weather was an advantage of sorts for the Newfoundland athletes, because they are used to running in it, Miller admitted, but cold, wet weather isn’t a boon for performance times.
Nevertheless Pearlgate runner Levi Moulton ran times that were enough two set two new records, at least for runners from this province, while teammate Jennifer Boland also set a Newfoundland provincial record. Moulton’s records were in the 1,200 metre and 2,000 metre events, while Boland set hers in the 100 metre race. “The weather definitely played a factor,” said Miller. “I would say their times could have been even better, but ultimately we’re still pretty happy with the times, obviously.”
Along with Moulton and Boland, the Pearlgate medallists included Julia Kawamoto, Amanda Wilkins, Chantal Barnes, Joey Pittman, Emily Foley, Michael Boone, Camryn Bonia, Victoria Healey, Noah Gullage, Eric Knight, Evan Knight and Mykenzi Harding. Max Baker Pike and Oliver Phillpott also won medals at the Atlantic Run, Jump and Throw Championships for athletes 13 years old and under, which was held at the same time. Other members of the team Pearlgate team included Caitriona Bonia, Chloe Dawe, Allison Whelan, Ruth Shelton, Skye Barnes and Gerard Power, all of whom turned in strong performances as well.
Miller said the members of the Pearlgate contingent really enjoyed the tournament. “Everybody loved it,” he said. “It was a well-organized meet. It’s just nice to get out and see some different competition. Everybody had a good time, it was a great group… The running community is still relatively small here, so it’s always nice to not have to race the same person you’ve raced all summer.”
The next big meet for the club’s members is the Legion National Yoyth Track and Field Championships set for Sainte-Thérése, Quebec later this week. Most of the 17 athletes on the Newfoundland and Labrador tream are members of the Pearlgate Track Club.
O'Flaherty's flair shows well in memoir and biography
Patrick O’Flaherty has been a mentor of sorts to me for many years. No, I never sat under his teaching as a professor of English at Memorial University. But I have profited immensely from his many books. I return time and again to his The Rock Observed as I continue to read the literature of Newfoundland.
At this moment, he stands in the enviable position of having two books published at virtually the same time.
“This was not intentional,” he explains to me in a recent email, “but this is just the way it is.”
One is Scotland’s Pariah: The Life and Work of John Pinkerton, 1758-1826, published by the University of Toronto Press earlier this year. A revision of the author’s doctoral dissertation, it is the first book to examine the Pinkerton oeuvre.
I was torn as I read it, for I wanted desperately to like the subject of O’Flaherty’s biography. Pinkerton was all and more of the following: antiquarian, poet, cartographer and historian. On the other hand, he epitomizes less noble characteristics as forger, serial adulterer, bigamist and religious skeptic.
“He was,” O’Flaherty summarizes, “an ornery character.”
Pinkerton knew and was admired by literary masters such as Edward Gibbon and Horace Walpole. Pinkerton himself was a man of letters, who left an astounding array of writings.
O’Flaherty follows this remarkable life from his youth in Scotland to his exile in Paris.
I finished reading Scotland’s Pariah with keen appreciation for the man O’Flaherty dubs “a neglected, deeply flawed, but intriguing human being.” For who among us would dare to deny his fallibility as a creature of Earth?
O’Flaherty’s second book to be released this year is an autobiography, Paddy Boy: Growing Up Irish in a Newfoundland Outport, published by Nova Scotia’s Pottersfield Press. In the same way that the author seeks in Scotland’s Pariah to untangle the skeins of Pinkerton’s life, he sets out in Paddy Boy to recall the disparate threads that make up his own life. And in this he succeeds admirably.
My friend, the late Benjamin W. Powell, Sr., of Charlottetown, Labrador, an author in his own right, often told me that a good writer takes his readers on a journey. If this is true, then O’Flaherty is a writer par excellence and a faithful guide to his personal journey, from his birth in 1939 to the end of his childhood in 1954.
O’Flaherty grew up in Northern Bay, the midpoint of the Northern Shore which, he explains, “was and to some extent remains a place apart,” despite the scant heed written Newfoundland history pays to it.
Meanwhile, he refuses to sentimentalize what to him is a special place. The Irish of his generation, he writes, resemble “the Galapagos turtle, an evolutionary oddity, a mutation developing in isolation from the rest of its species.”
Children sang songs like “The Wearin’ of the Green” and “Kelly, the Boy from Killanne.” They were aware of Ireland’s existence, which, O’Flaherty adds, “was more than what the Irish knew or cared about us in Newfoundland, which was zero.”
Paddy Boy is imbued with many flashes of humour. One example will suffice.
O’Flaherty’s Uncle Eddy Howell was a “dirty” berry picker. Businessman Philip Johnson, disgusted with the detritus among the berries, quipped, “Keep on pourin’, Eddy. I see another blue one comin’.” There should be an exclamation mark after this sentence!
The topics under the author’s purview are broad ranging, from history to geography, history to religion, politics to business, fishing to farming.
He was influenced by an all-pervasive religious sensibility which, he recalls, “intruded into everything we did and gave a meaning to life.” He was patently aware of “a distinct consciousness of religious difference.” His entire being was informed by the Catholic faith. Not surprisingly, after having divested oneself of the trappings of religion, one laments, “Who can say...that he does not feel a sense of loss?”
Much of Paddy Boy is given over to describing a Shangri-La-like childhood, a lost idyll, untrammeled by undue restraint, a life of glorious freedom, whether swimming, attending school, playing games, reading, or performing in plays and recitations at concerts.
Patrick the Professor is never far from the surface. There are 30 footnotes, though Paddy Boy is not intended as an academic treatise. There are judicious quotations from, among others, Philip Henry Gosse, Webster’s Dictionary and Francis Fukuyama. There are allusions to Mark Twain, John Kenneth Galbraith, T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. All serve to anchor O’Flaherty’s unique journey.
O’Flaherty bridges the old separate country of Newfoundland and its new status as a province of Canada. He remembers his father taking a “valiant stand” in the 1948 Confederation debate.
“What mattered to him was the opportunity to make money for his family, and he saw in Canadian union the prospect of an end to hard times.”
O’Flaherty himself adopted his father’s pragmatic view.
The end of childhood morphed into “a strange new world.” Here’s hoping O’Flaherty has at least one more book in him, a sequel to Paddy Boy, recreating his post-childhood life and times.
I have to ask, though, where are the “snaps”? There’s nary a one between the covers. As I read Paddy Boy, I tried to visualize how specific people looked. Photographs would have brought the author’s word pictures into sharper relief.
So there you have it, two lives of note representing two different centuries – Pinkerton and O’Flaherty – brisk reads both and well worth the investment.
Burton K. Janes lives in Bay Roberts and can be reached at burtonj@nfld.net
Clothes, textiles to be added for curbside recycling pickup
Mount Pearl residents will soon be able to add another type of item to the recycling bin – their old clothes.
The City plans to pick up household textiles at the curb, and offer a central drop off point, as part of its recycling program, with the material being sorted for donations or converted to rags for use in the depot and public works department.
The provincial government’s Multi Materials Stewardship Board is giving the City $10,000 towards trying out the idea.
The MMSB is giving the City an additional $10,000 to evaluate its existing curbside recycling program, educate residents about its environmental benefits, and reward and enforce participation through random curbside audits.
Council’s Infrastructure and Public works Committee chairman John Walsh acknowledged the grants during last week’s public council meeting.
“The textiles one was really interesting to me,” Walsh said. “These are great initiatives and the money will be well spent.”
Walsh noted the plastic garbage boxes used for residential trash collection makes it harder for operators to see what is being thrown away and sometimes “problematic” items end up in the bins. The random audits may counter some of that.
Deputy Mayor Jim Locke said two such problematic items, namely a couple of 20 pound propane tanks, were recently discovered in the garbage. Fortunately, he added, workers were able to identify the tanks during screening so that they didn’t up in a compactor and possibly explode from the pressure of crushing them.
“I wanted to bring this up publicly because people have no idea what they’re doing when they’re throwing this stuff out,” Locke said. “They’ve got to dispose of that type of material in the appropriate way. You can’t put that in a black garbage bag and throw it out because we could have a massive fire, potential health effects, a death even. So I like this initiative where we’re going to do some auditing to see what we’re putting in the black bags right now… We do have to do a better job of educating people about the importance of what not to put in these bins for the safety of the residents and our collectors.”
Walsh added that other problematic items are ending up in the trash too, such as tubular fluorescent lighting bulbs, car parts, cellular phones and paint cans. “There are all kinds of things that should be recycled through other means that are now hidden,” he said.
One of the goals of the spot auditing and education program, Walsh pointed out, is to get the City’s diversion rate for recyclable materials back up to where it used to be. The diversion rate has decreased from about 15.5 per cent of the household garbage being put on the curb to about 9.5 per cent.
As for the textile recycling program, Mayor Randy Simms noted textiles make up some four per cent of Mount Pearl’s garbage stream. “And we’re going to be able to take probably all of that out,” he said.
The City and MMSB are hoping to divert some 170 tonnes of textiles annually from the regional landfill as a result of the program.
Admiralty House gets into the 'spirit' of things
The operators of Admiralty House, Mount Pearl’s official museum, proved last week that not everything about history and exhibits has to be deadly serious. In a spirit of fun and a bit of adventure, the 100 year old former British navy wireless station was used to host local ghost hunter Jonathon Mallard of the Life After Death Society. About 30 or 35 people showed up, and if you believe the sounds heard by the guests, a couple of ghosts may have been present too.
The event appears to have transpired as the result of a bit of serendipity. Museum Manager Carla Watson said Mallard happened to drop by the museum one day to kill time before taking his daughter to a nearby park.
“It just so happened that we came upon the topic of him being a paranormal investigator,” Watson said. “And he asked if we would be interested in having an investigation done. We all thought it would be a laugh, we didn’t really expect anything to be found, but then when the reveal came we were all kind of blown away by how much he was able to hear.”
Mallard used the presentation to present evidence from a paranormal investigation he conducted at the museum on June 12. Using “electronic voice phenomenon” equipment, essentially a hacked radio that runs through frequencies at an accelerated rate to pick up fragments of speech by paranormal beings, Mallard recorded two voices.
One of the voices seemed to have a connection to an exhibit at the museum, Watson said. “We have a gift box here from 1914 that has some original 1914 tobacco,” she explained. “I was talking to him about it while he had the Spirit Box running and he heard, ‘Where’s the snuff?’ And we heard a female voice saying, ‘This is Anne,’ followed by ‘Our house burnt down.’ So we’re wondering if that might be Lady Anne Pearl, whose homestead actually burned down.”
The snuff box, which is on load from The Rooms, belonged to a Royal Navy reservist and was a gift of Princess Mary of England, who during World War I established a gift fund for British servicemen and their families.
“She gave all of the Allied troops a gift box,” said Watson. “On it was a picture of her and inside there would either be a pen and some candy, if you weren’t a smoker, and if you were a smoker there would be tobacco.”
As for the fire, it occurred in August 1840, less than a year after Sir James Pearl died. Following the fire, Pearl’s widow, Anne, lived with her sister in St. John’s for a while before returning to England. The Pearls had been granted some 1,000 acres of land in what they came to name Mount Pearl in 1829. It was a gift from Governor Thomas Cochrane in recognition of Pearl’s naval service. He had been a member of the Royal Navy since being a boy. At 15, he participated in the historic Battle of Trafalgar as a midshipman aboard the HMS Neptune, one of the key vessels in the fleet of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Watson said Mallard also came up with “a visual he got of some sort of black shadow orb.”
The whole event was meant in a spirit of fun, she noted. “People sometimes say they get the heebee jeebies (at the museum), a feeling like you’re being watched,” she said. “We have a volunteer who sometimes opens up on the weekends for bookings and she says she’s smelled smoke and seen things move and heard things, stuff that we can’t really explain.”
Watson said Mallard is convinced Admiralty House has some “residual” paranormal activity going on “where these entities kind of exist and do their day to day things and may not be aware that we exist and if they do know that we exist they’re only commenting on what they see, they’re not actually trying to directly interact with you. It’s not like the scary movies where things are flying all around the room. It’s more subtle and more subdued.”
Mallard’s findings will probably be used for a special event at the museum at Halloween, Watson said.
This is a big year, in fact, for the museum. The building which the museum is situated in turns 100 years old on September 16. It was built as a Royal Navy wireless station.
Museum chairman John Riche said special events are being planned for the centenary. In the meantime, the board members who oversee the facility are not averse to having a little fun, especially if it draws attention to the museum.
“Admiralty House is doing fantastic,” Riche said. “Over the last two years we’ve really stepped it up a notch, re-evaluated all of our exhibits, re-evaluated all of our programming and we’ve got a great new manager in Carla. She’s just a superstar. She’s young, fresh out of university, she did some work at The Rooms, moved to Saskatchewan, but we knew about her, heard about her and brought her back and she’s done a fantastic job.”
Riche said the City of Mount Pearl is also really supportive.
“They saw that we were making a real serious effort, not only at increasing the profile of the museum, but the exhibits,” he said. “It’s a legitimate museum, it’s got some pretty darned cool stuff in there. We’ve got a great Florizel exhibit, we’ve got a replica Marconi kite, we’ve got some charts in there that Captain Cook used.”
Riche too had heard the rumours and rumblings of spirit activity around Admiralty House. There is one tale, he said, that has Lady Anna Pearl riding around the property on her horse at night. Haunted Hikes founder Dale Jarvis has done some work on that legend. Riche noted that you can hear his presentation on the museum’s radio station, CICQ, which is located at 92.3 on the FM dial.
As for Mallard’s presentation, Riche said it was enjoyable.
“He’s a ghost hunter. He tells you to bring your scepticism with you and I brought a good deal of it,” Riche said. “And so did a lot of the people there. But he’s a great showman and a great guy and very entertaining. He made some legitimate arguments during his presentation and found some voices. It’s not going to be an exhibit for us or part of the museum profile, but we’re going to have some fun with it around Halloween.”
Waterford River flood plain study will lead to new development rules
The City of Mount Pearl has agreed to comply with any new flood plain management plan for the Waterford River as part of a major new study being conducted by the Department of Environment and Conservation.
Director of Planning and Development Stephen Jewczyk told council during its public meeting last week that the province needed a quick decision on the request so that it could start the work shortly.
The request actually arrived at City Hall just minutes before the regularly scheduled council meeting.
“The intention is that the study will start in October,” said Jewczyk, but the request for proposals for companies interested in doing the work was set to close on July 20 with a deadline to respond by August 20.
“This is something that we’ve been asking for the past two years,” Jewczyk added.
The completion date of the $350,000 study is March 31, 2016 and will affect all three municipalities through which the Waterford Rivers runs, Jewczyk said.
“We’re not just talking about the river, we’re talking about the actual watershed,” Jewczyk pointed out. “It’s a very expensive study, it involves a lot of modelling, it involves a lot of special geo-data, and is an update of our current flood risk mapping… And the important piece is that it will now include climate change factors. And that’s what we’ve been asking for.”
Mayor Randy Simms welcomed the news, noting Mount Pearl has been working in conjunction with the Town of Paradise and City of St. John’s to promote the health of the Waterford River.
“You’ll all recall that one of our goals was to have the cleanest urban river in Canada,” he said. “And one of the things we wanted to do is a study on the health of the river, which is a study that we’re negotiating and writing a terms of reference for now.”
That study is in addition to the one about to be carried out by the province.
Simms said in order to achieve the goal of having the cleanest urban river in Canada all three municipalities must employ a consistent approach in regulating the activity around it.
“And one of the ways to build that consistent approach is to actually know the river,” Simms said. “One of the things we don’t know about the river anymore, and we’ve heard that comment from our own residents, businesses and others, is that we don’t actually know where the flood plain really is anymore, we don’t know what’s impacting the river beyond what we’ve done ourselves. You’ve got to know where you’re coming from to know where you’re going. This is a very important piece of work.”
Simms said having the Department of Environment take such an aggressive approach to getting the study done is great for all the municipalities connected to the Waterford River.
Councillor Dave Aker asked whether developments that are already approved will be impacted by any new regulations that will be developed as part of the study.
“The way we work legally is that if there is a permit issued, they will be able to continue, if the permit was issued prior to the new flood plain mapping coming into effect,” Jewczyk said.
Once the plan comes into effect, Jewczyk added, the City will change its zoning regulations to accommodate it.
“I think what you will see if the flood plain has dramatically changed as a result of climate change and everything else, development that once existed outside (the flood plain) is now inside,” Mayor Simms said. “Encouraging those businesses to take mitigating action… is to their benefit.”
Leak finder is money well spent
A new piece of equipment for finding leaks in water lines is “working out tremendously,” says Mount Pearl Deputy Mayor Jim Locke.
He made the observation at last week’s public council meeting.
Like all municipalities drawing water from the Bay Bulls Big Pond system, Mount Pearl is contending with huge water bills that are projected to grow even steeper next year.
That makes the detection and stopping of leaks important dollar wise.
Locke said the correlator “is allowing us to identify the leaks as accurately as possible. There’s less digging, less resource time spent.”
At less than $40,000, Locke said the correlator is one of the best investments he’s seen since becoming a councillor.
According to the City’s Director of Infrastructure and Public Works, Gerry Antle, the correlator uses computer software to track the acoustic 'footprint' of leaks along a water line, helping workers to locate the source of a leak faster.
Council hears renewed call for speedbumps
Mount Pearl Deputy Mayor Jim Locke is renewing his call for the City to install speed bumps on some streets.
“We all said this during the last election campaign and for me this was the number one issue,” Locke reminded his fellow councillors during their public meeting last week.
The issue arose during a discussion of the Transportation and Public Safety Committee report.
The chairperson of that committee, councillor Paula Tessier, noted the City has been getting complains from some residents about speeding and staff are monitoring the situation and analyzing data collected from street monitoring signs.
“I’m not sure everybody realizes that, but those solar powered street monitors actually collect data and we use that data when we start to get complaints,” Tessier said. “Also our MEOs (Municipal Enforcement Officers) are going to be ticketing violators. They do it, we’re going to continue to do it, and there may come a point, depending on how problematic an area is, when we might actually have to concentrate on that.”
That’s when Locke weighed into the debate, saying he’d like to know how many tickets have been issued.
Locke said residents are asking about speed bumps. When he raised the subject during his first days as a councillor, he noted, he was told speed bumps are problematic for Metrobus and for city plows during winter snow clearing operations.
“And someone said, ‘If you put one on one street, you’ll have to put them on 50 streets,” Locke added. “Well, my view is if 50 streets need them, you put in 50 speed bumps to reduce any particular casualties.”
Locke urged the committee to consider installing speed bumps on those streets where the data indicate speeding is a problem.
“I’d suggest we could put them in temporarily and then take them up,” Locke said, arguing speeding isn’t as bad during the winter months. “We could keep them down say until November, and then take them up so that our snow plows don’t have to worry about them. I’m just throwing it out there as food for thought so the committee can have a look at it.”
Tessier agreed that the argument in the past was that speed bumps were problematic for Metrobus, snow plows and emergency vehicles. “But now we’re seeing that there are different styles of speed bumps that may be available temporarily,” she said, adding the committee is looking at different varieties.
While the data indicates that in some places speeding isn’t as big a problem as some people think, there are “hot spots” Tessier said where some kind of action is needed.
“We need the data to back it up,” Tessier said.
“I like the idea of more research on it,” Mayor Randy Simms said. “I am not a fan of speed bumps at all, but having said that, there may be places (where they are needed). There is one thing for sure we can say about them: if you want to slow people down, they slow people down. Of that there is no doubt. I just sometimes think that some things are overreactions… But I am glad to see that you are researching it.”
Councillor Dave Aker said the City must be careful to target only those streets that have speeding problems, but agreed with Locke that speed bumps should be part of the “arsenal” when it comes to combating problem driving.