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As part of a financial penalty for using an inappropriate herbicide, the City of Edmonton will help fund a University of Alberta researcher’s project looking into natural parasites to kill slugs.
The city was fined a total of $165,000 after pleading guilty Monday for the use of Hyvar X-L in the southwest neighbourhood of Haddow in 2016. As part of the punishment, the city will pay a fine of $14,600 and as part of its creative sentence pay $150,400 towards three environmental projects.
A creative sentence can be used to divert penalty funds to projects that have a connection with the offence.
Broken down, the largest sum of $70,400 will fund University of Alberta researcher Lien Luong’s study looking into finding and identifying a natural parasite that can kill slugs.
Luong said she was contacted by a representative of Alberta Environment and Parks who had heard of her project through previous media coverage in order to receive funding through the city’s fine.
Luong said the money will help in lots of ways.
“We’re in a discovery stage. We need lots of people to go out and collect samples and the bulk of that honestly goes to hiring technicians and support research assistants (who) can fan out and collect as many samples as they can and bring them back to the lab,” Luong told Postmedia Tuesday.
Eventually, those funds will be used to support laboratory experiments including molecular analyses.
Another $30,000 will go towards two new eco-islands within the Wagner Natural Area between Edmonton and Spruce Grove. The islands would both be approximately 64 square-metres, one in Osbourne Field and the other in Villeneuve Field.
According to the creative sentencing report, the Osbourne eco-island would “seek to establish natural mixed-wood vegetation with appropriate shrub and herbaceous ground cover.”
The Villeneuve island would “serve as a nucleus for the expansion of the naturally diverse vegetation of the mixed-wood forest south of it, and would enhance existing succession of treed vegetation into the field.”
The final $50,000 will go towards an invasive plant species project made up of three parts.
An estimated $25,000 will help to update the Identification Guide for Alberta Invasive Plants, which describes all of the prohibited noxious plants that appear in the Alberta Weed Control Act. It contains photos and information to help people identify invasive plants that are illegal to sell or grow in the province. The Alberta Invasive Species Council (AISC) intends to revise the guide for next year.
About $10,000 will go towards
updating Be Plant Wise brochures, which focuses on ornamental plants that gardeners and greenhouses may not know are legislated as invasive species.
Finally, an anticipated $15,000 will go to a project using goats to remove invasive plants in the North Saskatchewan watershed, which has been demonstrated as “a very effective and environmentally friendly method to control terrestrial invasive plants,” according to the creative sentencing report.
This is the second time in a week an Alberta municipality has been handed down a creative sentence for violating the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act.
In an agreed statement of facts, two local governments admitted work started on landfill alterations without first receiving permission.
The Town of Whitecourt and Woodlands County received a combined fine of $100,000. Some of the penalty is being diverted towards two projects.
One portion will see $15,000 go to training for landfill operation and management. Another $80,000 will go towards a study on how poplar trees help in absorbing and cleaning waste-tainted water from landfill waste cells.