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Lake owner makes 11th-hour pitch to achieve settlement with Town

September 8, 2016   ·   0 Comments

In an 11th-hour bid to avoid a costly Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) hearing, the owner of the proposed site of occasional water-skiing events has written Mono Mayor Laura Ryan proposing an out-of-court settlement.

In the letter, Caledon orthodontist Cliff Singer offered to host no more than two water-skiing competitions annually instead of four permitted under an NEC decision that is being appealed by the Town of Mono.

The hearing, scheduled to open today (Thursday) at the town’s municipal offices near Mono Centre, is scheduled to run five days, but the Bay Street lawyer hired by the Town wants it extended to six days, enough to deal with 43 issues he wants to raise in support of denying the development permit sought by Dr. Singer. The additional time could also be used to deal with a long list of restrictions the Town has proposed in the event it loses the main battle.

In his letter, Dr. Singer told Mayor Ryan he had tried “very hard to reach an acceptable compromise with yourself, Council and Plannner/CAO Mark Early,” noting that last April he had sent the Town a chronology of his attempts to resolve concerns that the competitions on his man-made lake in a worked-out gravel pit might be in breach of Mono’s noise bylaw or somehow cause air and water pollution. “I have no desire to put my pond water at risk or waste my money or the Town’s on needless litigation.”

He proposed that in exchange for the Town withdrawing its appeal he would reduce the number of proposed competitions to two from four annually and hold them only between June 15 and September 15 instead of between May 1 and October 31, the period allowed by the challenged development permit.

Beyond that, he said he would abide by terms of a special event permit issued by the Town so long as its requirements would be “reasonably obtainable in a 60-day time period prior to our competitive gathering and not incur a combined, total cost of more than $250.”

As for the noise bylaw, he undertook that the competitions would meet its requirement that they take place within the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays, and assured the mayor that there would be “no demonstrable negative environmental consequences as a result of the water ski competitions.”

Advising the mayor that a member of Mono Council would be welcome to attend the competitions, Dr. Singer said he had already “fulfilled the Town’s request of a $2000  acoustic study which found that my water ski boat meets Mono’s noise by-law,” and had tested nearby wells “to demonstrate that there are no detectable levels of gasoline in neighbours’ wells and I commissioned a hydrogeology report from a hydrogeologist which concludes that my requested boating activity poses minimal risk.”

The letter concluded: “No one is more committed to maintaining and enhancing the environmental integrity of our land than our family.  The Town and I share a common goal of promoting healthy, responsible, environmentally sustainable recreation in our community.  The activity I am requesting facilitates our mutual objective.”

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