The saga of the small white lady’s slipper orchid continued on Wednesday evening when a group of residents told a City of Brandon planning commission meeting about their concerns over the flower’s safety.
Ryan Nickel, the city’s director of planning and buildings, was on hand for a public hearing about the southeast secondary plan, which affects an area beyond the orchid habitat near the intersection of First Street and Patricia Avenue, but it was the endangered flowers that garnered the most attention.
A rare small white lady’s slipper grows in an ecologically sensitive area on the southeastern edge of Brandon. That area was the topic of conversation at a special planning commission meeting Wednesday. (File)
There are very few habitats in Manitoba for the flower, with the patch in Brandon’s south end being one.
The future of the orchids has been a continuing point of discussion since it became public knowledge that developer Stoneridge Equities was looking to build housing on a property containing part of the habitat, though it and the City of Brandon have since committed to putting aside land to create an urban preserve administered by the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Concern for the flowers still lingers, especially after some of the habitat was damaged in early May by a farmer who missed the boundary of the property he was working on and tilled some of it.
Before the subject was opened to comments, Nickel said the hearing was not meant to address the tilling issue or the remediation of the damaged land, just the secondary plan.
Nickel brought up a written submission sent in by Gillian Richards, a Brandon University researcher. She expressed concern the high water table the orchids thrive in on the land could be adversely affected by development that could route water away from the plants.
The high water table could also lead to flooding in large rainfall events like the one last year, she stated. She advocated for a larger hydrological study before any work occurs on the land.
One of the public speakers, David Toop, also expressed concerns about the proximity of groundwater to the surface.
"If you don’t drain, then you’re doing a real disservice to the people of Brandon who are buying these houses because they’re going to have serious problems with their foundations," Toop said. "The geotechnical report that we saw, it shows that there’s corrosion to concrete, there’s unstable foundations and water leaking in."
Richards also brought up federal guidelines specifying a protected site like the one proposed for the orchids should have a buffer zone of 300 metres while the current plan only has a 50-metre buffer zone.
In response, Nickel said the buffer zone as proposed was approved by both provincial and federal regulators.
Another public speaker, Rick Askinis, said the federal Species At Risk Act not only outlines a 300-metre buffer zone, but also an analysis of how changes to the ecosystem will affect the species in question.
On the subject of the water table issues, Nickel said developers would address them when getting approval to build, not during the secondary plan process.
"There were questions about the provincial process and environmental impact assessments," he said. "Once again, we’re not the experts in that department, we defer to the province. I’m like a broken recording that everyone’s sick of hearing, but I just keep on saying it because the province is the authority. My understanding though is that the Nature Conservancy did submit a stewardship and protection plan that was acceptable to the province."
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Orchids hot topic at planning commission - Brandon Sun
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