The Town of LaSalle is being forced to outsource a responsibility once handled by the Essex Region Conservation Authority but removed under Ontario's More Homes Built Faster Act.
Council has approved an administration recommendation to retain LGL Limited to provide natural heritage expertise for new development applications for the purposes of Environmental Impact Assessment.
LaSalle mayor Crystal Meloche says they don't have anyone on staff who can look at sensitive biology or saving a natural heritage space.
"Unfortunately with Bill 23, we have to look what our options are and our option is to find an outside source, and that's what they had for us," she says.
Part of Bill 23 has resulted in conservation authorities being prohibited from commenting on conservation and environmental matters, except for flooding and erosion.
It means that conservation authorities will not be able to offer expertise on ecology, natural heritage, wetlands and biodiversity for development proposals.
An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is typically required as part of a Planning Act application for a development proposal that is within or abutting an area identified as a significant natural heritage feature.
Meloche says the costs associated with these services would be recovered through the development application process.
"So we would hold a retainer that would pay for those items, so it's not impacting the municipality anymore than it should," she says. "It is obviously unfortunate because we did rely on ERCA, this does change things for us. But we think we came up with a reasonable option to make sure we're still protecting those areas of LaSalle that are so important to us."
Meloche says there are existing laws in place where these assessments are required.
"You can't let this gap exist, there's definitely previous things in place and for us, it was covered by ERCA. So we knew we were protected, we had someone to go to, they had somebody on staff who did that type of work. Without them and without the Town of LaSalle having someone on staff for that, and there's not a lot of people who do know that kind of background, this is our next step and the best way to protect us," she says.
According to the Essex Region Natural Heritage Systems Strategy, the Town of LaSalle has 16.35 per cent of its overall land use as being dedicated to natural heritage areas (wetland and terrestrial habitat).
Part of the Provincial Policy Statement emphasizes the importance of protecting natural heritage resources and suggests that natural features and areas shall be protected for the long term. The PPS goes on to regulate development and site alteration within and adjacent to natural heritage areas.