Dear Editor:
The proposed Gerrie Road subdivision will envelop our heritage property. We addressed Centre Wellington council at its meeting on Jan. 27 with the following information.
Using averages, the building of this subdivision will emit 16,888+ tons of greenhouse gasses and take 66,237,645 litres from the water table yearly.
It is doubtful our community is meeting provincially-mandated targets of “jobs per-hectare,” but is meeting (and possibly exceeding) density levels. This is unhealthy and unsustainable.
The proposal to include cluster townhomes and an apartment building – far away from shopping, services, and commuter roads – means that people living in “attainable housing” will have to pay more to reach conveniences, negating the effect of attainable housing.
Think pandemics! Higher density means higher transmission rates.
This property hosts sensitive wildlife; black bear, the protected pileated woodpecker, and is on the migratory path of the endangered monarch butterfly. Development will negatively impact these.
It will knowingly be placing residents adjacent to the Elora transfer station. While studies for noise/contaminants have been completed, human nature is what it is, it won’t be long before conflict arises!
This development will sit on the first farm lot ever cleared north of the Grand River in Nichol Township (and possibly all of Wellington County), circa 1832-1836. The Gerrie homestead that it will envelop is considered to be the earliest stone house in our community. As the founders of neither Elora nor Fergus ever lived in the communities they established, this property should be recognized and celebrated as one of, if not “the” founding homestead in our community.
Class A heritage farmland destroyed. Negative impact on an international migratory path. Huge carbon outputs, millions of litres of water pumped from our water table, knowingly placing residents in potential conflict, the destruction of the rural heritage landscape of Gerrie Road.
A better plan can be devised! We have a starting place for it ourselves. Since the meeting, however, we have not heard a word from the developer or the township.
Please write/email or phone your Township of Centre Wellington and Wellington County councilors. Tell them we need a heritage impact assessment on the century property, the heritage farmer’s field, and a study on how this development is going to impact the wildlife that calls this area home.
Working together we can create a better proposal for this land.
Paul Jarsky and Fred Gordon,
Elora