The Peterborough County Landowners Association encouraged county council on Wednesday to support the dissolution of conservation authorities, including the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority.

Tony Kenny, Peterborough County Landowners Association president, asked council to consider taking on the conservation authority’s responsibilities.

Conservation authorities need to be dissolved, Kenny said, pointing to the rising costs borne by municipalities and the ability of municipalities to handle conservation authority responsibilities in their own planning departments.
“(Conservation authorities) were created after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. At that time most municipalities had little or no planning (staff ),” he said. “(Conservation authorities) have outlived their usefulness.”

Conservation authorities, created by the province, are local watershed management agencies that deliver services and programs to help project and manage water and other natural resources. Their responsibilities include regulating development within floodplains.

The county doesn’t have the authority to dissolve a conservation authority but the provincial legislation does include a mechanism to close the local agency and transfer its responsibilities to another organization. Part of the process would include approval by the conservation authority’s board of directors and by the environment minister.

Don Pearson, general manager of Conservation Ontario, explained the responsibilities of the conservation authorities and the legislative framework that governs their action to council at its meeting on Wednesday.

Conservation authorities undertook almost 3,000 watershed stewardship projects valued at $22.45 million with 2,979 landowners in 2008, Pears

on said, plus they helped restore 66 kilometres of streams and planted 2.6 million trees.

“Conservation authorities are the largest planters of trees in southern Ontario,” he said.

Conservation authorities manage 439 conservation areas, 8,130 campsites and 2,841 kilometres of trails that attract 5.2 million visitors annually, Pearson said.

“That makes the authority system as large as provincial parks,” he said.

Kenny said municipal funding for the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority rose to $894,710 this year from $448,560 in 2003.

Council didn’t discuss Peterborough County Landowners Association’s position that the local conservation authority should be dissolved.

Havelock-Belmont-Methuen Reeve Ron Gerow told council that municipalities and conservation authorities need to make sure the province pays its share of the costs associated with provincial regulations.

Items county council approved Wednesday include:

* Spending $22,000 for the purchase and installation of a water tank that can be attached to and removed from a county-ow

ned dump truck for road sweeping and bridge cleaning.

* An information report that was given to the Peterborough Regional Health Centre review team outlining how Peterborough County-City Emergency Medical Services paramedics and ambulances spent about 3,000 hours inside the hospital because of off-load delays with patients, costing the ambulance service budget $300,000.