CITYSCAPE

Unquiet flows the Don

It was surprising to see Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star's Urban Affairs columnist, describe the proposal in the Fung/Olympic proposal to naturalize the mouth of Don River as a "no-brainer" in a recent column about the waterfront plan. He leaves the impression that all that is involved in the restoration is to remove the concrete walls on the banks of the lower Don and the Keating Channel.

There is considerably more to it than that. In fact, of all the propositions in the waterfront plan (removing the Gardiner Expressway, rehabilitating the Portland soils, etc.), it is the attempt to resurrect the mouth of the Don that most deserves to be properly examined through an environmental assessment.

A bit of history is in order.

The Don entered the lake north and west of its current location, closer to the Gooderham & Worts distillery. The insect problem was exacerbated by the distilling practices of G & W. The company kept 4,000 cows on site to eat the leftover mash. The cattle in turn pooped in the river and the feces were trapped in the bulrushes. Hence the flies.

After failed attempts by the city to fix the problem, in 1912 the newly created Toronto Harbour Commission took the matter in hand and resolved it by re-engineering the lower course of the Don and creating a 90 degree turn into the Keating Channel. After changing the course of the river, the THC back-filled the swamp and created the site now proudly touted as the world's best possible Olympics location by Toronto's booster boys.

Over the decades many structures have been erected near the banks of the lower part of the river. Hume acknowledges the Gardiner, but there are also industrial plants, railway tracks, Lakeshore Boulevard and the Don Valley Parkway.

Since the creation of the Keating Channel, the federal harbour authority has assumed responsibility for cleaning out the contaminants that flow down the river. These are trapped in sedimentary deposits on the floor of the channel or, in the case of oil spills by floating log booms straddling the channel. On average, there are six oil spills a year that make their way down the river.

The Keating is dredged each year by the authority and approximately 30,000 cubic meters of material is deposited in a designated dump site at the end of the Leslie Street Spit. This is an easy way to prevent unwanted contaminants from entering the inner harbour and keeping the waters navigable at a reasonable cost.

In the mid-70s environmental rules changed and it became financially difficult for the THC to dredge the channel because it had no cost-effective method of disposal. THC ceased dredging. Three years later so much silt had accumulated that an island formed in mid-channel and a tree started growing on the island. The contaminated material then spilled into the inner harbour and the sediment choked off ship access to the nearby cement company docks.

That year, the spring ice flows in the river jammed at the shallow mouth and the river flooded the lowlands. It forced the closure of the Parkway for two days until the jam was cleared.

As a result of that the Harbour Commission obtained provincial approval for the Leslie Street dumpsite and negotiated a cost-sharing program with the municipality and the conservation authority for annual dredging for flood control.

The waterfront plan shows the river swinging southwestward, bordering the Gardiner and ramp from the DVP to the Gardiner and entering the inner harbour near the former Canron site, just west of Cherry Street. Another bridge over the river is required to accommodate Lakeshore traffic.

The idea of the naturalized mouth is to create 52 acres of more park space, much of it wild. However, given the transportation corridors bordering this park, it is going to be anything but peaceful for users. The city has already created parkland adjacent to the Gardiner and Lakeshore that is seldom used because of the noise and smell of nearby traffic.

The initiators of this plan foresee a swamp developing at the mouth. This is a good thing, in case you were wondering. Biologists claim that a swamp acts like the "lungs" of a river, trapping and cleaning out all sorts of contaminants. How big a swamp will be needed to clean up one of the most polluted rivers in Toronto is yet to be determined.

Also it is not clear how bulrushes, pussywillows and lily pads will deal with plastic bags, glass bottles, aluminum cans, foam containers, animal carcasses and petroleum spills that merrily sail down the river. Trapped, certainly. Cleaned up--hmmm--who will do that?

Left unchecked, the river will start forming an ever-expanding delta that will increasingly impede navigation in the inner harbour for freighters, cruise ships, tour boat operators, and recreational boaters. Who will ensure navigation, how will it be done and at what cost to whom?

Concerning money, the naturalization plan was originally forecast to cost $35 million. Later, as the plan began to be more detailed, the expense rose to $80 million. Now the party line is that it cannot be determined until an environmental assessment is completed, meaning that it is likely to be more. Two million dollars and 18 months are the estimates for the cost and time of the assessment itself. These two figures could easily be doubled before it is over.

There is a mountain of taxpayer dollars being thrown into the river and a lot of people have a direct stake in the long-term outcome of this initiative. It deserves the most thorough examination. Now that is a no-brainer.