Landlocked: Farmers running out of options as wetlands designation looms

Dave Morley was just 19 when he bought a swath of arable landon the outskirts of Ottawa.

He and his young wife, Bev,moved into the 200-year-old logfarmhouse on Fernbank Road that wasoriginally owned by the Stitts, the family who lent their name toStittsville.

Morley farmed there for 60 years until he died in 2012. Bev, now 80, still lives in the old house.

In recent years, encroaching developmenthas flooded large sections of the property, turningit to marsh. The land has become so saturated that 65 per cent of ithas now been identified by the city as provincially significant wetlands (PSW).

The marshy land isn't just increasingly unsuitable for farming; if it's designatedPSW, it becomes protected and can no longer be sold for development, draining the property of its future value.

This was our future, our retirement plan for the entire family.- Joni Sabourin, farmer

Morley's daughter, who has continued working the land with her own family, says that puts her father's legacy in jeopardy.

"Dad would be devastated if he was still here, and we are all devastated," Joni Sabourinsaid.

"This was our future, our retirement plan for the entire family that's ripped right out from underneath us."

Wetland designation devastates family

6 years ago

Duration 0:26

Joni Sabourin says the decision to designate her family's farmland as provincially significant wetland (PSW) is financially devastating and unfair.

'Water doesn't run up'

Sabourin has lived on the farm for mostof her 55 years, and has watched Ottawa's suburbs creepcloser and closer. Now the backyards ofthe vast Deer Run subdivisionto the northeast slope toward the family's hayfields.The neighbourhood's culvert drains onto the land just behind the fields.

To the west,the neighbour's land has been filled so it now sits about threemeters higher than the Morley farm. The water pours in from all sides, saturating the fields, Sabourinsaid.

"We were never wetlands. It's these developments, so much higher than we are," she said. "Water doesn't run up."

All that water has killed existing trees and ushered in a new crop of plants that thrive in wet conditions. That new ecology is what prompted the city to identify the land as PSW, the critical step before official designation.

But according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, how wetlands came to be isn't a factor when it comes to their designation. The only thing that matters is that they exist now.

"It's just wrong,"Sabourinsaid.

A vital role

Dave Morley's farm is part of a complex of more than 500 hectares the city plans to officially designate as PSW.

The city, the province and environmental groups saywetland preservation is a vital part of improving water quality and slowing the release of greenhouse gasses.Studies have shown wetlandsoils can storelarge amounts of carbon dioxide, keeping it out of the atmosphere.

The plant varieties found in wetlands can alsoact as a natural filtering system, removing sediment and pollutants from the water.

That's why both environmental advocates and the ministry have been pressuring the city to include newly identified wetlands that fall within city limits in its official plan.

The time is now to get to the end of this story and get those wetlands protected.- Paul Johanis, GreenspaceAlliance of Canada's Capital

"We have this large complex of wetlands providing the ecological services ... and can expect that they will not be drained, they will not be altered, they will not be diminished," said Paul Johanis,chair of the Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital.

"The time is now to get to the end of this story and get those wetlands protected."

The conflict goes back more than a decade, when the city last attempted to designate newly identified wetlands in the Goulburn area. At that time, landowners made similar arguments about encroaching development and poor drainage.

Mike Westley's property on Flewellyn Roadwas caught up in that application.He believes the overwhelming stress caused by that experience led to his heart attack.

Westley's property was ultimately deemed not to be wetlands. In some casesthe city agreed to delay its decision to allow landowners time to install amunicipal drain, which can channelwater away from the land, but which proved too costly for many.

Since then the city has hired a consultant to take another look at the area, and that survey uncovered even more new wetlands.

You don't flood someone's property and then designate it wetlands.- Mike Westley, Carleton Landowners Association

Westley said he's not surprised.

"You don't flood someone's property and then designate it wetlands rather than fix the drainage," said Westley, nowdirector of the Carleton LandownersAssociation.

"It's the wrong thing to be doing to private property."

Fight coming to city hall

These "unnatural" wetlands placecity council in an awkward position, said Coun. Scott Moffatt, who represents the Goulbourn area.

The municipality is obligated to protect wetlands once they're identified and designated, but Moffatt believes council must also come to terms with the fact that across the region, once-arable farmland is suddenly turning to marsh.

"The question will be, how does council respond to that?"

In 2006, the city paid developer DCRPhoenix more than $1 million forthe land across the road from the Morley farm in order toprotect its wetland characteristics, even though in the end the land didn't meet the bar for PSW designation.

Dave Morley's familyhas appealed to both the city and the Ministry of Natural Resources, and has retained a lawyer.

Sabourinsaidif the city sincerely values the land her father spent his life cultivating, it should pay for it before it's too late.

"If you want [wetlands] that bad, buy it."