Environmental activist Carla Carlson will finally get her chance to speak at tonight’s city council meeting about the destruction of the protected frog pond that she and many others fought so hard—and so long—to save.
Among her many questions, Carlson will demand to know if the developer truly intends to restore the frog pond on the corner of Decew Road and Richmond Street, as the city’s manager of engineering assured council last month.
Carlson doesn’t believe that will ever happen. After looking at the developer’s blueprints, she sees nothing but a park.
“They’re 100% destroying that pond,” Carlson says, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “Their plan is to put grass and five species of trees. They’re just going to make a little passive park there.”
Back in the 1990s, Carlson started a group called “Friends of the Richmond Street Forest” to save the frog pond and neighbouring forest from encroaching development. A long legal battle followed and in the end, Carlson convinced the city and developers to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the forest and pond never be touched.
But as ThoroldToday first reported last month, a developer sent in heavy machinery and decimated the protected pond.
The city says it issued the developer, DG Group—which is building a storm pond in the area—a site alteration permit to remove some dead trees, on the condition it would plant a few new ones. In the process, however, workers churned up the mud where frogs and salamanders were hibernating, squishing them to death.
When pressed about the bulldozed frog pond during the Feb. 15 city council meeting, Thorold’s manager of engineering, Sean Dunsmore, assured councillors that the frog pond would be restored.
“The memorandum of understanding did refer to the fact that we weren’t going to destroy the frog pond and that is absolutely the intent,” Dunsmore told the meeting. “I have drawings here of what the frog pond is going to look like after we’re done.”
Carlson wants to see proof.
“From what I could read in their plans, they’re planning on sucking all the water away and making it dry,” she says.
Councillor Fred Neale says the city missed the fact that the frog pond would be destroyed when it reviewed the plans.
“When the developer comes along and it’s just an extension of development the developer has done over the years in that area—we looked at it and we didn’t see that part of it,” Neale says. “You don’t because you look at it and it’s there for years and we just thought that when the development comes along they’ll go around it.”
Amid all the backlash over the bulldozed pond, the city launched an internal review into the environmental permitting process at City Hall. The report is due March 22.
“If the city is making a report, obviously there’s a lot they don’t know,” Carlson says. “They don’t know the history of this pond, so if we don’t tell them before they do the report, then what are they basing the report on?”
Carlson has another question for city council: What happened to the MOU?
“Apparently they must not be able to find the memorandum of understanding because I’ve asked for it and I haven’t received it,” she says.
Tonight’s council meeting starts at 6:30.
