Airport May Change Green Space to Obscene Place-Toronto Island Airport

October 12, 2003

Airport May Change Green Space to Obscene Place
Toronto Star, Canada
MICHELE LANDSBERG

If last week's golden weather lured you outdoors, with its dreamy echo of
summer, then dream on this, too: A lush green 80-hectare park, lapped all
around with sparkling water, cooled by fresh lake breezes and open to
stunning vistas, with a gorgeous beach, restaurants, sports fields,
community gardens, wildflowers and boating. Three minutes away from
downtown by ferry. Open to all.

That what the Toronto Island Airport could be. Environmentalists tell me
it's Toronto's most beautiful possibility.

All the more sickening, then, that city honchos, most mayoral candidates,
elite corporate interests and some desperate airplane workers are
determined to foist a nightmare on us: 900,000 passengers a year, taking
off in turboprop airplanes every five minutes, while airport traffic
chokes the bottom of Bathurst St., spewing greenhouse gases into the air.

The Toronto Port Authority is proposing a lift bridge, a large new
terminal with 19 gates, hangars, a multi-storey parking garage at the foot
of Bathurst, a fuel tank farm on Hanlan's Point and airplanes constantly
coughing out toxic gases (ethylene, propene, acetylene, formaldehyde,
ethylbenzene, methane ... the list is endless) many of which are known
carcinogens.

The airport will puke tonnes of de-icing fluid, fuel and solvents right
into the lake, not far from a city drinking water intake. Expanded routes
to the north mean that planes may take the flight path straight up the Don
Valley, laying down contrails of noise on suburbia.

More than a year ago, Toronto's medical officer of health valiantly tried
to alert a snoozing city council to the illness burden of an expanded
airport.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that people living close to
an airport the size of Toronto Island Airport have 22 times the acceptable
lifetime cancer risk. Communities downwind (and remember that lake winds
blow over the airport and right into downtown Toronto) suffer double the
rate of asthma and respiratory disease.

Imagine planes constantly roaring past, mere metres away from high-rise
condos, public schools, recreation centres, hotels, the Music Garden,
SkyDome, the CN Tower and those ambitious new waterfront facilities to
serve our multi-billion dollar film industry.

Give you the chills? It ought to. Just when we were on the brink of hope
that our waterfront could be restored to bustling life, the Toronto Port
Authority (which is not accountable to Toronto's citizens) and most of the
candidates for mayor are pushing to expand an airport which has constantly
been a financial failure and which depends on subsidies from our property
taxes to function at all.

Why? Who on earth wants this monumental piece of idiocy?

"Remember Mirabel," said Allan Sparrow, a former city councillor in the
Crombie and Sewell days, and now a consultant and community activist with
Community AIR, the anti-airport citizens' group. Mirabel was a boondoggle
and a ludicrous failure. "But some insiders made fortunes building runways
and terminals," Sparrow said.

Real estate interests would love to see that bridge to the island. If the
expanded airport falters financially, the airline owners will push to
allow jets rather than turboprops. The pollution, noise and danger
increase exponentially. If the airport fails, however (after draining city
pockets for a few more years), the bridge will be ready to facilitate real
estate development.

"Don't let them steal that land and that lake! The law says they belong to
you, the public!" exhorted Robert Kennedy Jr. last week, speaking at a
rally in support of mayoral candidate David Miller, the only strong
opponent of the airport expansion. A leading environmental activist
lawyer, Kennedy emphasized that every major city in North America (Boston,
New York, Chicago) saved itself from dereliction and became prosperous by
renewing its waterfront.

What staggers me about the airport proponents is the sheer amount of spin
they deploy to cover up the stupidity and greed of their backroom deal —
and how easily and blandly that spin gets reported.

Just a couple of examples: Airport proponents keep insisting that the
version of Bombardier's Dash 8 turboprop that Deluce plans to use is
"quiet".

Allan Sparrow laughs. "Business travellers don't like the turboprops
because they're noisy and they vibrate — so Bombardier made them quieter
inside the cabin. The actual decibel level outside is almost identical to
earlier models."

Others sneer at David Miller's principled and energetic leadership against
the airport. "What can he do?" they mock. "The mayor has no power to stop
the airport."

Wrong. A newly elected council is entitled to re-open decisions taken by
the previous regime. If Miller is mayor, he will insist that council open
a new, more open and rigorous debate.

Safety? That's the bogus argument Barb Hall advanced when she supported
the airport expansion. But even the fire chief and head of ambulance
services told city council that the existing ferry service was neither
"inadequate nor unsafe." A lift bridge could cause marine accidents,
fireboat delays and wasted time in emergency.

And why does the Port Authority keep announcing the imminent start of
construction? It knows there are many legal obstacles to clear, and they
want to dishearten their opposition. They want the deal done in a hurry,
before the civic election.

But the deal is not quite done. The Port Authority's first environmental
assessment — performed by the same company that designed the bridge —
failed to probe adequately the issues of noise, traffic and pollution,
according to Medical Officer of Health Dr. Sheela Basrur.

Community AIR, the anti-airport activist group, exhilarated by the kind of
groundswell that stopped the Spadina Expressway, is preparing a legal
challenge. But the clock is ticking: The Port Authority has set a deadline
of Oct. 30 to challenge its environmental assessment.

You can support this urgent eleventh-hour battle by sending contributions
to Community AIR, P.O. Box 81057, 47B Harbour Square, Toronto M5J 2R0. The
Web site is http://www.communityair.org, and the group's volunteer
fundraiser, John McClusky, will personally answer your questions if you
write him at crownmouldingcompany@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Remember, when you vote on Nov. 10, that the most severe cancer risk from
airport pollution is felt within a 10 km radius. For the Island airport,
that means from High Park to the Beach and north to Eglinton. And public
servants are supposed to defend the public good — not backroom deals.
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