Tagged: Halifax Regional Municipality
Parking czar, please note – updated
Contrarian reader Jim Guild writes:
In Montreal, which gets a shitload of snow (to use a complex meteorological term), I believe they still allow parking on one half of most residential streets. On odd-numbered days, drivers can park on the side of the street where odd-numbered houses are located; on even-numbered days they can park on the other side. This means that local residents don’t have to rent parking for the winter, out-of-towners can visit overnight, Victor Syperek’s buddies can still be designated drivers for their drinking friends, and the snow ploughs can still make the roads passable.
Reader Gary Campbell disagrees:
You’re right about one thing, it is a small issue, so let it go. Hell, you are not even a resident of HRM. If it were not for you and a drunk nightclub owner, this would not be an issue at all. The so-called parking czar is indeed accountable to elected officials who have the power to change the bylaw. I noticed you mention nothing about how street parking prevents plows from opening the street to vehicles in an emergency. In the time it would take to have the offender towed, lives could be lost, but I suppose causing you some inconvenience is the greater evil. Let’s leave this issue to the residents of HRM many of whom agree with the ban.
I am, in fact, a part-time resident of HRM. The driveway my house shares with another often has one more car than parking spaces. The last car blocks everyone else in, requiring negotiations among three households (one house is a duplex) to determine who will be leaving in what order in the morning. Having one car (usually mine) park on the street avoids this.
That’s no problem when snow is falling and streets need clearing, but on clear nights when no snow plowing is underway, it’s an unnecessary imposition by overreaching officials who find it inconvenient to make distinctions between nights when a ban is needed and nights when it is not.
The safety issue is specious. Is there a single instance in the last five years when on-street parking has prevented plows from opening streets to emergency vehicles and a life has been lost as a result? I’m unaware of any. There may, however, have been cases where fear of fines encouraged the impaired to drive home when then should have left their car on the street.
I am not opposed to a parking ban. On the contrary, I favor vigorous enforcement—heavy fines, towing—during storms. But I oppose fines for that purpose when there is no snow clearing taking place.
Jim Guild’s suggestion of an alternate side rule would also solve the alleged problem.
Halifax’s parking czar relents—for now
Halifax’s unaccountable parking czar Ken Reashor used his arbitrary powers yesterday to end the Halifax peninsula parking ban 26 days earlier than expected.
The ban held sway for 84 days, from December 14 through March 4. I can’t find actual snowfall data for that period, but the table below (sources here and here) shows average snow conditions in Halifax (the only data available to officials when they impose the ban).
So in an average year, the 84-days period from December 14 through March 4 would include about 16 days with snowfall and about 68 without.
Why not target the 16 days when a ban is actually needed, with towing blitzes and much stiffer fines? Why not focus on the miscreants who actually interfere with snow removal and stop inconveniencing responsible car owners for an entire winter? It’s not as though Halifax sends trucks around on non-snowy nights to push snow back to the curb.
Ah but it’s so much more convenient for snow-removal bureaucrats to kick everyone off the streets all the time. Much more lucrative, too. Czar Reashor’s raiders issued 7,637 tickets during the ban, for a windfall revenue of $381.850, 81 percent of which presumably came on nights when no snow fell.
Czar Reashor is unaccountable in that city council can neither fire him nor tell him how to do his job. Only provincial transportation minister Bill Estabrooks can do that. Estabrooks, who represents a part of HRM where the ban is not imposed, bobs and weaves on the topic, insisting he needs direction from HRM Council and a change in legislation before protecting citizens from over-reaching bureaucrats. He’d sing a different tune if they ticketed in Timberlea.
Non-peninsular HRM councillors, who get the windfall revenue but not the aggravation, smugly stall for time. Two weeks ago, they rejected downtown councillor Dawn Marie Sloane’s proposal that council write Estabrooks asking him to ease up on the ban. Outlying councillors insisted a committee first study the issue—and report back once the 2011 ban is moot.
In the Great Scheme, this is a small issue. But it is emblematic of the arrogance that overtakes people with power: the comfortable notion that citizens must serve the convenience of officials, not the other way round.
Actress, restaurateur oppose environmental science
Another media outlet has presented admiring coverage of the campaign by Halifax restaurateur Lil MacPherson and Halifax actress Ellen Page to oppose something one might expect environmentally conscious citizens to campaign for: the productive recycling of composted human waste as a worthy alternative to dumping it, semi-treated, in the ocean.
A Contrarian reader describes today’s Herald story as:
One-sided journalism at its worst. Lil MacPherson is not an environmental scientist. Ellen Page is not an environmental scientist. Nowhere in the entire story is there any effort to present the case in favour of biosolids. Even the headline “Rising in defence of province’s soil” suggests that MacPherson and Page are on the right side and that the soil is under attack. Could the headline not also read “Actress, restaurateur oppose environmental science”?
Uh, yes it could.
Reporter Laura Fraser, who began her career in Sydney, is a friend, a reliable reporter, and one of the Herald’s precious few bright young lights, but, as explained in more detail here and here, I’m inclined to agree with this reader’s harsh assessment of this story.
Page and MacPherson employ a familiar oppositionist tactic: fire a shotgun load of fear-laden possibilities (disease, hormones, pesticides, heavy metals, “everything every sick, diseased person flushes down the toilet”) and demand that proponents of composting and recycling prove a negative: that nothing bad will ever happen.
The Herald quoted unnamed critics of composting and recycling as saying there has been “no extensive testing to establish whether there are long-term effects from eating food grown in the reclaimed waste,” but failed to contact a single actual scientist to find out what testing does show about the safety of the output of composting facilities like HRM’s.
Careful composting and recycling solve a terrible problem: our century old habit of dumping untreated waste into deteriorating waterways. They enhance sustainability. Tests have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to eliminate potentially harmful components, or reduce them to levels below conservatively designed safety standards.
No process or product can meet the Pace-MacPherson test of absolute safety forever. But there is an enormous body of science behind regulated soil safety standards, and we can use that science to make sensible judgements in the real world. Like all environmental science, this is a process of managing risks to sensible levels. HRM has done that.
Halifax public consultation template
A group of friends was planning a social gathering Thursday evening in Halifax. One demurred, saying work required her to attend Thursday’s public consultation session on the proposed new central library.
“If it helps,” said another member of the group, “I can pre-summarize the public meeting for you.”
- What a waste of money this — money that could be better spent on roads and health care.
- I can’t believe the city is being so cheap with this design. A bigger new library will draw tourists from around the world.
- Will it block the view from Citadel Hill?
- Can we attach this to a new stadium?
- Why does Halifax get everything? Why not build this in Eastern Passage?
- And (from a certain former city employee) this violates Section 12, Sub-section B, paragraph iii of the Downtown Halifax Redevelopment Zonal Buidling Code by-law passed in 1969.
Why bikes and cars breed conflict
Felix Solomon, a blogger for Reuters, proposes a Unified Theory of New York Biking that Halifax cyclists would do well to heed:
Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so.
They should use lights at night. And — of course, duh — they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it’s the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom follow nearly all the rules, most cyclists seem to treat the rules of the road as strictly optional. They’re still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules.
The result is decidedly suboptimal for all concerned, but mostly for the bicyclists themselves. New York needs to make a collective quantum leap, from treating bicyclists like pedestrians to treating bicyclists like motorists. And unless and until it does, bike relations will continue to be marked by hostility and mistrust.
Fearing an onslaught from militant bikists, I hasten to add that I like bikes, I hope to see more of them on Halifax streets, and I wish HRM would do more to welcome their use. But I think cyclists hurt their cause every time they flip, at will and without warning, from street to sidewalk to crosswalk. Be fish, not fowl, and mos def not both.
Via Kottke.org and Daily Dish.
The biosolidity of Ellen Page
If the admirable Ellen Page* wants to contribute to the environment of her home province, she might consider pressuring the Dexter government to rethink its politically expedient decision to delay regulations to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Mercury is a dangerous element with well-known impacts on human health, especially the health of young children. The province and Nova Scotia Power have known about their obligation to clean up mercury emissions for years, if not decades. [Disclosure: both NSP and the NS Govt. have been my clients.] The government’s decision to back away from that legislated commitment in the face of a threatened power rate increase came as a huge blow to morale in its Environment Department.
Power rates have been the third rail of Nova Scotia politics ever since they caused the defeat of Gerald Regan’s government in 1978. Darrell Dexter is nothing if not cautious, and he made the pragmatic decision to sacrifice a near-term improvement in public health for political longevity. That’s real politics, and a figure of Page’s stature could make a real contribution by weighing in on the side of health.
That would be a better use of her talents than opposing the productive recycling of biosolids, as she did in this appalling CBC-TV interview. Money quote:
I’m an advocate of hu-manure and utilizing our urine as a great nitrogen source for gardens and plants, but biosolids are very much not hu-manure… I like to refer to it as sewage sludge. It’s highly toxic. Look, I’m not a scientist, so I’ll say that obviously, but I’m a very concerned citizen and I’m worried because this is highly toxic material that is already being put on our land without the transparency of letting citizens of HRM and of Nova Scoti know.
Ellen Page
To paraphrase, Page sympathizes with government’s desire to recycle human shit and urine, and she acknowledges that she brings no scientific expertise to the discussion, but she believes Halifax’s sewage sludge contains too many toxic contaminants, whose implications have not be fully disclosed to or discussed with residents.
No single word is more misused, in journalism and in environmentalism, than “toxic.” It’s a relative term that is almost invariably tossed about as an absolute. The public imagines that everything is either toxic or not toxic, whereas toxicologists and serious environmentalists know that virtually everything, including pure water, is toxic at sufficient dose. Dosis sola facit venenum. Dose is what determines risk.
My hero: Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541)
Mercury is highly toxic at low doses. That’s why scientific risk assessment justifies spending lots of money (and political capital) to keep it out of our air. Untreated sewage also harms the environment, so most countries have stepped up efforts to remove solids from the waste stream. The question is what to do with them.
To answer the question, HRM built a biosolids processing plant at Aerotch Park to treat sewage sludge using the commercial N-Viro process. The HRM website has a description of the plant and the process, together with a schematic. The N-Viro Corporation website has a more detailed description of the process.
The provincial website offers a list of links on the use of biosolids throughout Canada, and a fact sheet on biosolids [PDF] (though the latter, frankly, is long on reassuring generalities and regrettably short on technical specifics.)
When the use of biosolids in Colchester County touched off a not-in-my-backyard furor a few years ago, the province held a public Biosolids Forum at which a variety of experts discussed their treatment and safety. (View their presentations.) Nova Scotia also established a broad-based committee to review provincial policy on agricultural use of biosolids. That led to revised and stricter guidelines [PDF] for biosolid use here.
The guidelines are worth a quick read. In contrast to the raw cow, pig, and chicken manure farmers apply freely to their lands, the HRM biosolids will be treated to kill pathogens. Samples from the plant will be tested regularly for fecal coliform, salmonella, Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Mercury, Molybdenum, Nickel, Lead, Selenium, Zinc, dioxins, furans, and PCBs. The guidelines restrict the use of biosolids on farmland by proximity to 14 categories of land and land use, including watercourses, drinking water supplies, bedrock outcroppings, drainage ditches, roads, buildings, etc. The setbacks vary according to the slope of the land, and depth to groundwater and bedrock.
Want more information? The Food Action Committee of the Ecology Action Centre (an environmental group I belong to and support) has a short position paper [Word doc] opposing the agricultural use of biosolids, but it’s very general, and focuses on an alleged lack of transparency. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment’s Biosolids Task Force has a website. A search of US educational websites for “biosolids safety agricultural use” yields 42 scientific papers; the same search on Canadian websites turns up 28.
Forums, task forces, stakeholder committees, websites, guidelines: Is it fair or accurate to describe all this as a lack of transparency?
On balance, HRM’s biosolids program offers a responsible way to recycle critical nutrients that would otherwise pose a pollution problem. Environmentalists ought to celebrate it, not oppose it.
One final note: Even by the lame standards of environmental reporting in Canada, the CBC’s treatment of this story is beyond disappointing. It took this unpaid blogger only a few hours to assemble the information and links included in this post, yet host Tom Murphy appeared to have no research at hand to contest Page’s wild claims about toxicity and non-transparency:
Murphy: But you know there is research out their suggesting, hey, it’s OK, and in this case the city put on, I think, about 25% of the manure they were using was this, so what do you say to that when they roll out the scientists to say it’s OK?
Page: At one point, doctors told us to smoke, so, you know what I mean?
So much for science. So much for journalism. I know television is conflict- and personality-driven, and by its nature must simplify complex issues, but this is negligent reporting by any standards.
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* More disclosure: I like Ellen Page. In 2003, when we were just getting our little film series off the ground, she was generous enough to travel to Sydney to attend our Canadian premiere screening of Marion Bridge, in which she had a breakout role. I have tried to write this post in a way she might find persuasive, although I suppose she won’t. Should she want to respond, Contrarian’s space is hers.
An early test for the NDP government
Is Peter MacKay channelling John Buchanan? Is Stephen Harper keen to cultivate a second Danny Williams in Atlantic Canada?
Those are two possible explanations of the Harper Government’s mean-spirited, post-election reversal of its commitment to help fund the $40-million, four-rink arena planned for Bedford.
The Conservative about-face presents an early test for Darrell Dexter’s Government.
Last month, the feds assured HRM officials that the project was on track to receive $15 million in infrastructure funding from Ottawa’s stimulus program. The NDP Government likewise committed $15 million, and HRM was to finance the remainder. Last Friday, Ottawa abruptly informed city hall it no longer considered the project eligible under the infrastructure program. [See: AllNovaScotia.com — subscription only.]
Coming hot on the heels of the Harper Government’s lopsided rejection of paving projects in non-Tory Nova Scotia ridings, the reversal smacks of political punishment. South End Councilor Sue Uteck drew a direct line between the sudden federal disavowal and the June 9 election of and NDP government—including former Conservative cabinet minister Len Goucher’s defeat at the hands of Liberal Kelly Regan. Regan is married to Liberal MP Geough Regan.
Insiders say Dan O’Connor, Dexter’s chief of staff, has taken pains to cultivate a working relationship with MacKay chief of staff John MacDonnell. Whether those efforts are sufficient to give MacKay second thoughts about this latest bit of federal Conservative pettiness may foreshadow the state of Canada-Nova Scotia relations for the duration of the Harper government.
