46-52 James Street North Backgrounder

Transcription

1 What you re reading started out as comments to the Province under the Environmental Bill of Rights. I received a public notice from the City concerning the request for zoning bylaw amendments and a public meeting on James North property in Jan/16. I thought it looked like a great infill project so I did not attend that meeting. The meeting I would have attended is one that was never called. I had no idea the property was a toxic site. When a Ministry of the Environment control (CPU) order is generated on a development, a pretty rare occurrence, it should automatically trigger a public meeting of the property owners within a short distance of the property; they should receive notices in a similar way to a planning meeting, they should be offered a public forum where it is explained to them what the situation is and exactly how it can be dealt with safely. I found out from Environment Hamilton about a public comment period, still open, for the CPU. The Draft CPU pays particular attention to dust control and the danger it poses during development which is as it's height during soil removal. Until the CPU is officially issued, it s not in force. Meaning that right now there is no control order in force on this property. At the moment the CPU exists only in draft form, the public comment period closed this past Friday, 17 June/16. At this time, much of the soil has been already been dug up and trucked away, the site is being continually disturbed with foundation work going on. The Developer has paid only lip service to dust control. This developer, by moving forward with construction before the Site Plan has been approved, the CPU finalized or the Building Permit issued is able to ignore everything in the CPU. Before the CPU is issued it is quite possible the foundation for this building will be fully complete. It stands to reason that it is exactly DURING this period that the CPU should be in full force because only at this time are toxic soil conditions fully exposed. This calls into question the entire process: What purpose will actually be served by a CPU on this property? This site should not be disturbed until the CPU is in place, a Site Plan has been approved and a Building Permit issued. Citizens of Hamilton should be able to look to their Civic Government in this situation. Incredibly, the Building Inspection Department maintains that the work going on at this site does NOT amount to "construction" requiring a Building Permit! This response comes from John Lane, the Manager of the City's Building Inspection Department and it is a response worthy of a Monty Python skit. As a citizen who lives adjacent to James St. North and has concerns, discovering the process is difficult and not intuitive because the pieces of the system are disconnected. On Mon 2 May/16 workers commenced digging and shipping soil on a large scale from the site. Despite ground conditions being wet and muddy, there seemed to have been no concern for trackout. On Tue 3 May/16 the heavy digging and shipping of large dump loads of soil continued, as did the track out. By the morning of May the 4th, neighbours and Environment Hamilton had started complaining to both the City and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. In response the Site Supervisor deployed a tractor with wetting system and sweeping brush. Unfortunately the wetting system was not operating, resulting in dry brushing, creating a storm of dust like something you might encounter swirling in the desert. This is public information, please copy & use it freely. Page 1 of 5

2 Photo taken May 4th showing dust control measures at the site. Note the depth of dirt in the tractor tracks. This is a photo taken on the morning of May 3 at Rebecca St. and James St N. Note that while the heavy track- out is still on the road, a complete covering has already migrated to cover the sidewalk with 1/8 of dirt. No clean up was ever attempted of this dirt. It just dried up, turned to dust and blew away. This is public information, please copy & use it freely. Page 2 of 5

3 We worry that the soil that left the site in such an irresponsible fashion was in fact toxic soil. We understand that toxic soil must be disposed of at a proper site but who makes sure it s extracted responsibly? We re told it s largely a self-policing system, the police were not on the job during this operation. During my flurry of activity on May 4th I spoke with a City Planner and I was told that no site permit had yet been issued, other things had to fall in to place first, including the environmental component and it would be a good while before a Building Permit was issued. The work going on at the site now was under a Demolition Permit issued by the City in November/15. He told me the work was merely completing the removal of the foundations of the old structure that was leveled when the Lister Block was renovated. In the past few weeks work on the site has increased tremendously with large hole boring, concrete pouring and foundation setting. You would think this might mean that the developer was issued a Building Permit. That confused me tremendously, how could the site be built on if there was no CPU in place. Well it turns out NOTHING is in place, no CPU, no Approved Site Plan, no Building Permit. NOTHING.. This is the transcript that I received from the Cameron Thomas, the City Planner who deals with this property: From: Message <noreply@babytel.net> Date: June 16, 2016 at 4:27:32 PM EDT To: mrjwilbur@gmail.com Subject: Message from s ref:990 Your message is attached. Hi John like your message it's Kim Thomas from the City of Hamilton I'm just calling about your message. I think it's r egarding the student residence on James Street. I am the planner on this file and the right now going through site pla n approval. They don't have permit through building there just working on some getting the plans ready to get a found ation permit but let may take some time I just don't have any details on that but feel free to give me a call if you need t o at and my extension! is Thank you. Bye for now. On Friday morning I spoke with John Lane, Manager of building inspections. He told me he would send a By-Law Inspector to the site and if construction was going on, including site preparation for construction, he would shut it down. But two hours later -- this was the response from him: Mr. Wilbur - Thank-you for sharing your continuing concerns relating to this project. A Building Inspector attended the property yesterday, (proactively), to determine if the activity on the site required a Building Permit. He has submitted his full report to me this morning. The workers in your video clip are indeed correct. The shoring that is currently being installed is considered as part of the site preparation work, and will not form part of the construction of the building slated to be built at this property. If you are concerned about this pre-construction work, (i.e. you may be concerned that the shoring is being constructed correctly/adequately), be rest assured that the Ministry of Labour oversees this sort of thing. Any and all concerns you have should be directed to the Ministry at their customer service number: This is public information, please copy & use it freely. Page 3 of 5

4 46-52 James Street North Backgrounder We will continue to monitor this property to ensure that no work (that requires a permit) commences prior to permit issuance. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. Regards John W. Lane, M.A.A.T.O., C.B.C.O., C.P.S.O. Manager, Building Inspections City of Hamilton Building Division Here is some evidence of a construction site not actually under construction, no Building Permit required, only in Hamilton and there LOTS more where this came from: Clearly the developer is not waiting for such formalities as a CPU, Site Plan or Building Permit. He s going ahead full speed to construct the building. Equally clearly the City is not willing to stand up to the developer or Liuna. A developer such as this seems able to operate completely ignoring any oversight, direction or control from either the Province or the City. The DCPU states that hard cap barriers are not required during development as long as the property is fenced to prevent intrusion from the public. We are left to wonder about the workers on site none of whom have been observed wearing any protective equipment, not even basic dust masks. Wind blown dust contamination is called-out as a site specific hazard but the fencing called for to prevent intrusion does nothing to stop or mitigate this hazard. This very specifically has become an This is public information, please copy & use it freely. Page 4 of 5

5 issue with surrounding neighbours and places them at risk. The fact that the developer is doing virtually nothing to mitigate this risk is of concern. The developer is clearly not actively concerned with dust control or remediation. In fact we suspect that the worst incidence of uncontrolled dust in the neighbourhood was when the toxic soil was being dug up and removed from the site. As far as we can discern NONE of the provisions for dust control are being observed on the site. They may a weak attempt to use a sweeper attached to a front end loader to sweep the street once in a while but track-out goes on unabated. Only the limited truck traffic at this stage, mostly concrete trucks, prevents this from getting out of control again every day. There is no attempt to dampen the works. There is a dust matt, intended to help clean the truck tires before they exit the property. This is simply clogged with mud, not maintained in any way, not and does nothing to control track out. I believe that this developer has sufficiently demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to self-police on anything. It must be heavily supervised and monitored. For this reason it seems completely unreasonable that the DCPU waives any requirement for the posting of any financial assurance. We ask that an such assurance be required and that, if anything, is should be much higher in value than normal because of the behaviour observed before this project is even legally under construction. There are tables at the back of the CPU that set out the Property Specific Standards for the Contaminants of Concern found on the site but the levels of these contaminants actually found on site is not shown. So it says, these toxins were found and here are the allowable limits for each, but it doesn t tell the reader what was actually found by site sampling. This makes it impossible to understand how far out of bounds the found levels are; how contaminated the soil is. Is seems to me that what we see before us at James and Rebecca may be the best illustration of what insanity still means in Hamilton. Who among us could possibly behave with such disregard for the process and not get shut down? John Wilbur mrjwilbur@gmail.com WordPress: Insanity At James and Rebecca? Online photos and video: This is public information, please copy & use it freely. Page 5 of 5