Wetlands and streams are not just in conservation areas; they can be in your backyard. In fact, there are many residents in King Township who do have wetlands and streams in their back yards. Being the proud owner of a property with natural features is truly very special. If you are fortunate enough to have a watercourse in your back yard or if you are simply interested to know more about these features you will be interested in a Community Information Session on Sunday Jan. 26th 2-4 at King City Library.
Representatives from Ducks Unlimited and Toronto Regional Conservation Authority will be at the session. You will hear how to be a good steward of a wetland & stream. You will learn what you can and cannot do in terms of property improvements in proximity to these features and importantly how you can get permission to do property improvements.
This Community Information Session is being brought to you by Sustainable King.
There will be two more sessions.
Sunday February 23 King City Arena: Stewardship Activities in King
Sunday March 23 Schomberg Library: Growing in King
I have a branch of the East Humber river running through my backyard.Over the past decade or so I’ve watched the deterioration of the stream. We used to have fish. Now we have silt. In addition I suspect but have not proven, that the rate of flow is significantly larger after rain falls and during the spring snow melt. As a consequence, the stream bed is eroding.
In many jurisdictions there is a great deal of effort being put into the control of runoff. Our Township as well should be vigorously addressing this matter. It’s called adaptation to climate change. The measures that can be taken are numerous and resilient communities are benefiting from the guidance that is available from many sources. This is all part of the philosophy of sustainability. We should have a handbook, a user guide for managing natural aquatic systems. The guide would be for residents, developers,and the municipality in general.The economic and environmental benefits from some small efforts made by everyone could be enormous. Flooding, destruction of habitat, contamination, loss of species, degradation of waterside properties are all problems that can be addressed in this context. Things are not going to be the way they were. Our task is to try to anticipate and adapt to what is coming. The evidence is irrefutable. In our sustainability strategy climate change is mentioned a few times but no concrete plans or objectives are developed. Sustainability is about climate change. In this context, what is our sustainability committee doing?
Hi Hans, First…no debate with me about the threats. As to what the Sustainability Committee (SC) is doing I would like to answer you in terms of what is happening across the Township; some is happening as a result of leadership by the SC, some is happening as a result of Municipal Staff leadership and work. The SC’s function is very much about engaging the community: educating/informing with the goal of influencing behaviors and activities. The series of Sunday afternoon community sessions is an example. One of our SC members is writing articles for the King Sentinel Weekly; she is also meeting with leaders of faith based groups with the idea of making presentations at their services/meetings. SC is WAITING and WANTING community groups to come forward with grant requests to help fund projects. To date the uptake on this has been slow but I hope that this will change as people become more aware. SC will be supporting TRCA’s outreach of sessions on sustainable gardening. Staff has embarked on training on low impact development (LID) techniques. I would say SC championed the development of “green” standards for new construction; Staff are now working on finalizing the “list” and it will become part of the communication piece with builders/developers. An audit of all our buildings(i.e municipally owned) is underway; that will provide the basis for developing plans to do energy/conservation upgrades. We are in process of developing a tree bylaw. Even if I took the time to identify all the projects my intent would not be to say we are doing enough. As you have said it is a critical; we all need to do more.