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Written by Alan Halberstadt
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Wednesday, 22 November 2006 |
 Sam Schwartz on the night he opened his Windsor office.
Windsor native Marko Paranosic, Schwartz’s right hand man on the Windsor border file, moved to Kitchener in August to take a position with Stantec Engineering.
Louise Cusinato, the other warm body in the Windsor office at 500 Ouellette Ave., moved back to Schwartz’s Brooklyn office in September.
Schwartz opened the Windsor office with much fanfare in the spring on 2005, figuring there was much work to be done for the city in pushing his celebrated bypass route to a new Ojibway bridge. But the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) engineers rejected the Schwartz route, as did environmentalists who claimed it would damage the ANSI natural area along the LaSalle border.
The provincial government then distanced itself from Schwartz, fearful for some strange reason, of pushing a route near or through the LaSalle planning district.
Meanwhile, the city’s strategy took on a reactionary bent, waiting for DRIC to make announcements on its proposed six-lane, dedicated truck route along Huron Church Road, and then saying no, no, no, tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, through lawyer David Estrin and Mayor Eddie Francis.
Schwartz’s time began running out in Windsor when his proposal for doing a CoDA (Conditions of Design Acceptance) on the DRIC plan was eschewed by the city.
CoDA was designed to have the city lay out the conditions and set the agenda for a new route to a second border crossing through the establishment of design standards, measurement of the social and environmental impacts, and the ripple effect on the Windsor economy during construction of any truck route through Windsor.
In December, the new City Council will be coming together to plot its strategy going forward on the border file. It is critical, in my view, to officially declare that the Schwartz plan is history, and embrace a more proactive approach.
I have supported in the past a full environmental assessment of the Schwartz bypass, which would have separated fact from fiction with regard to any damage to the Spring Garden ANSI.
The province, in a sop to City Council, committed $4 million to the city to conduct that EA on its own. But that idea seems ridiculous now, since the city would need the co-operation of LaSalle, which is not going to happen without provincial pressure. Then there is the little matter of the new provincial Minister of Transportation telling a Windsor crowd recently that there would be no truck route through, over or under the ANSI. This makes further debate of the Schwartz Route redundant.
The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario is prepared to spend a billion dollars in Windsor building an enhanced route to the border. What a shot in the arm that would be to our wounded economy! We cannot afford to blow this opportunity!
Readers have left 2 comments. No.2 Untitled
The about face you have done on Schwartz is encouraging, Councillor.
However, some questions beg to be asked here....
1) What capacity is Schwartz now acting in on the City's behalf? I understand he joined David Estrin presenting for the City at the Coast Guard hearings in Cleveland regarding the bridges improvement/twin span EA.
2) You say you always supported a full EA to seperate "fact from fiction" about impacts on Spring Garden.
In my opinion this is disingenous, but in any case, what about impacts on the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Reserve?
3) The bypass had much bigger problems than any negative impacts it may or may not have had on Ojibway/ANSI natural areas. It never made sense to put the trucks on an 8km, 6 grade change loop to avoid
2km of Huron Church and then put the trucks right back onto Huron Church at the Expressway to continue up Huron Church to the Bridge.
Cansult's discrediting of the bypass plan on behalf of the Fed's was based entirely on the weakness of this idea and in fact NEVER MENTIONED any natural area impact considerations.
So the question is: Are you trying to blame "environmentalists" and "LaSalle" for the demise of the bypass plan when in fact it was the stupidity of the plan itself that killed it?
4)There was always a rumour that Schwartz's "first draft" preferred an approach entirely different from any that were presented back in Jan 2005. It has been rumoured that this route was withheld due to its
potential for political fallout locally.
Were you ever aware of any "first draft" from Schwartz rejected by the Mayor's office?
5) Why was CoDA "eschewed" by council?
Yours suspiciously,
Alan McKinnon
CPOW
Citizens Protecting Ojibway Wilderness
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