When Black Creek Alliance started a little over a year ago we were dreaming of cracking concrete, planting trees, maybe some flowers. We wanted to create an inviting space where we could bring our children, walk our dogs, meet our neighbors. We never imagined we would have to fight a 55000 sq foot meat freezer in the middle of the green space we had so many hopes and dreams for.
The Toronto and Region Conservation will be voting on March 23rd, 2018 ON whether or not they will server land in a well-loved green space on the floodplain in the Rockcliffe-Smythe Neighborhood and sell it to a local meat packing company so that they can build a 55000 square foot (8 acres) cooling and freezing unit.
200 Rockcliffe Court, a 'brownspace' in the middle of a City of Toronto Neighborhood Improvment Area that has a long history of environmental discrimination, was once a sewage treatment plant that had be moved after Hurricane Hazel. The plot of land has since grown over with grass, shrubs, and trees. The ground is healing and restoring itself and the community has a lot of hopes for this space. IT HAS BEEN GREEN SPACE FOR 30 YEARS AND WE WANT THE LAND TO RECOVER SO THAT IT CAN EVENTUALLY BENEFIT THE COMMUNITY AND WHO KNOWS, MAYBE THE KIDS IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD WILL GET TO CHASE FROGS AGAIN ONE DAY. They said it couldn't be done at the Brickworks or Tommy Thompson Park and they did it. Rockcliffe-Smythe believes we can do it too.
The community has been working hard with the City of Toronto, Hydro One, and other green space stakeholders in the area to reclaim and rejuvenate the green space in the last few years. This news that it would become a massive storage facility came as a surprise to most people as we were not consulted about these decisions and the process has not been transparent.
Paving over and building storage facility on contaminated land in the middle of a floodplain is a step backwards in time in the wrong direction. First and foremost the area needs naturalization and flood mitigation – not pavement, steel and coolant chemicals.
Please help us let TRCA know that Toronto should be conserving and restoring the little bit of green space we have, particularly in floodplains, not paving over it and building industry.
Join our Black Creek Alliance Facebook group or follow us on twitter @AllianceBlack
#WhereTheresAWillowTheresAWay
