Can we really afford to lose prime soil to development?
Politicians, planners and environmentalists have set out numerous best practices to avoid the nastiest impacts of urban sprawl.
For instance, according to their rule book, thou shalt not develop distant suburbs on thy neighbour’s prime farmland. Thou shalt not surround and hem in a city with low-density acreages. And thou shalt not leapfrog, which means jumping over undeveloped land and building a new community far from the urban core.
The plan for the new city of Bremner, which is to have 54,000 people in 50 years, is for the community to be relatively dense, so if it actually follows that plan, it will avoid one major pitfall.
But it breaks two other commandments.
First, it’s a leapfrog city to an already existing leapfrog city — it’s planned to be built east of Highway 21 and north of Highway 16, a good distance from Sherwood Park, which is already a good distance from Edmonton.
Second, it’s going to be built on some of the best soil that Alberta has, chernozemic soil rich in humus and nutrients, excellent for growing crops.
The Bremner plan is an abstract issue for most of us, far removed from our daily concerns, but not so for the farmers and landowners of that area. They are caught in a bind. Some hate the idea of this farmland going to waste, especially when Strathcona County council could just as easily have decided to develop southwest of Sherwood Park on the rolling hills and much poorer land of the Colchester area.
But other pro-development landowners are tired of the 15-year debate and financial uncertainty caused by the development plan, one that still awaits approval from the province.
Madeline Boisvert, 65, lives in Beaumont, but her old family farm is in the Bremner area.
Her 159 acres were rented to another farmer after her father retired from farming in 2006.
Renting is increasingly common in the area.
It’s difficult for any farmer to actually buy land and build up their farm because speculation on the land has tripled the prices from at least $10,000 an acre to approximately $30,000 an acre, Boisvert says: “We have not been bought out, but we’re surrounded by people who have been bought out.”
Boisvert hopes to sell, but not Lois Gordon. Gordon, 60, lives on her Bremner quarter section, and has her brother, Wayne Myers, growing grain on it. She believes Colchester made far more sense to develop, but Bremner was picked because there are fewer landowners to deal with, the developers have political influence, and the Bremner land is much flatter and easier to develop.
Gordon’s parents, Elmer and Mary, moved to Bremner in 1948.
“It’s the best soil,” Gordon says of her land, which has chernozemic soil an impressive 45 cm deep.
“It’s black, black, black soil. It’s rich. It grows anything. We’ve got land that won’t do anything (in Colchester) because it’s sandy and brown and loamy, but this stuff is like liquid gold. It needs to be protected. They’re not making it anymore. It takes nature hundreds of years to make an inch of this stuff and we’ve got it a foot deep.
“People seem to think you can scrape it. That’s what is so offensive. The developers say, ‘It’s just some black dirt we can move.’ Which infuriates me. Move it on to somebody’s front lawn or a boulevard, it’s not going to grow anything. It’s a finite resource and people don’t seem to realize that.”
Gordon says Strathcona County doesn’t need Bremner, that population growth simply isn’t going to happen here as was foreseen during the last boom. Gordon also points out the ideas that promote sprawl, such as the loss of farmland and leapfrogging, were still ascendant when the Bremner plan was concocted in the 1990s, but are now far less popular.
Gordon is often asked why she wouldn’t want to cash in her land for a few million dollars. “Not everybody wants to be rich,” she says, adding she loves her lifestyle, with her home near a ravine and a creek that is a major wildlife corridor.
“This is my home. I respect it. I have affection for it. And it’s the right thing to do. My brother will say, ‘Well, you can move.’ But where to? Where will I find what I have here? There’s nowhere else I’m going to find it.”
It’s not just Gordon, though, who will lose out if Bremner is developed. Where else are we going to find rich soil like this? Do we really want to lose such a huge amount of it?
It’s black, black, black soil. It’s rich. It grows anything ... It needs to be protected. They’re not making it anymore.