Solar project has no place in river valley

The land is more than `weeds and grasses,' Kristine Kowalchuk writes.

The Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition has filed a legal challenge against city council's 7-6 decision to rezone 99 acres of river valley parkland for Epcor's industrial solar power plant.

We are asking a judge to determine if this project should have been subject to the river valley bylaw. This bylaw, created to protect our river valley when it is “threatened by commercial and industrial uses, as well as by civic uses such as public utilities,” states that major public facilities in the river valley must be deemed “essential” by council. Council did not do this. Instead, they considered the project private — even though Epcor received Alberta Utilities Commission approval as a “municipal subsidiary.”

Solar energy is, of course, good in the right location.

But a river valley location is not essential.

Nor is it appropriate; as our province's own solar guidelines clearly state, large solar projects do not belong in river valleys because they cause ecological harm.

And indeed, as the city's own ecological planners emphasize in their technical review, the proposed river valley location of this project will cause negative environmental impacts that cannot be mitigated. While Epcor has referred to the land as just “weeds and grasses” and “low-value,” this technical review considers it valuable aspen parkland habitat.

The 99 acres are also part of a regionally significant wildlife corridor connecting the mountains to Elk Island National Park and beyond. Wildlife cameras show this land to be heavily used by deer, as well as by moose and elk, and this fall a short-eared owl was photographed in the forest overlooking the meadow. A power plant built here would eliminate habitat the size of 26 football fields, and turn this part of the wildlife corridor into a 1.5-kilometre long constricted alley along the river's edge.

This land is also doing work solar panels cannot: purifying the air, cooling the city, helping to prevent drought and flooding, providing habitat for wildlife, offering tranquillity to people, harbouring heritage (the land has the same cultural designation as much of Head- SmashedIn Buffalo Jump) — and, of course, sequestering carbon. If the goal is to lower our city's carbon emissions, we must preserve land already functioning as a carbon sink.

Developing alternative energy and protecting biodiversity are not “competing interests.” The ecological crisis is both a climate and a biodiversity crisis, and we need to solve both together. Siting solar panels on rooftops, brownfields, and landfill sites while protecting trees, meadows, and soil accomplishes that — effectively and inexpensively. As a recent study in Nature stated, “Restoring natural landscapes damaged by human exploitation can be one of the most effective and cheapest ways to combat the climate crisis while also boosting dwindling wildlife populations … If a third of the planet's most degraded areas were restored, and … areas still in good condition, that would store carbon equating to half of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution.”

There are many ways in which the city can cut carbon emissions rather than reach for the river valley. Has it pushed for solar panels to be placed on all city buildings? Has it mandated, like Paris has, that all new rooftops have solar panels? Has it created a solar energy policy, following the province's guidelines? Has it created an office of natural areas, biodiversity, and climate change to ensure expert planning as we navigate the ecological crisis? None of the above.

So it falls to citizens to pay legal fees to hold the city accountable to its own bylaws, to protect our river valley, and to insist on cost-efficient thinking.

The river valley, in its protected state, is a valuable public good. It needs to be protected from questionable development. Stewardship also strengthens our bid for an urban national park or perhaps the world's first urban Indigenous protected and conserved Area — both of which the federal government is now considering.