Experts say there are problems with St. John's new wetland conservation system
CBC
Developers in St. John's need places to build, but a lot of vacant land in the city is wetlands, which means it's protected by environmental regulations.
According to Coun. Maggie Burton, an increasing number of developers have asked the city if they could build on wetlands. That led the city to come up with a new system to determine if they can.
The system is called the Wetlands Ecosystem Services Protocol (WESP). In this system, if a wetland receives a score of six or higher, it must be protected.
On Oct. 29, city council approved two motions relating to the protection of wetlands, removing the city's previous protection plan and replacing it with this new scoring system.
"We will end up including many more wetlands to be conserved because of the changes we made," said Burton.
Burton says that a second category was added that if a wetland scores an 8.5 or higher, it's automatically protected.
"So that massively expands the number of wetlands that will receive protection within the city," she said. "And that's because of the Environment Sustainability Experts Panel."
City council consulted the Environment and Sustainability Experts Panel (ESEP) to review the new scoring system.
The ESEP says wetlands are a critical part of the city, as climate change is expected to increase extreme rainfall.
"Wetlands are a cost-effective tool in mitigating and adapting to climate change," said the ESEP in its recommendations from the city council agenda.
While the panel said it appreciates the city wants a tool to protect the wetlands from development, they are very concerned about the WESP system as it is defined by the city.
The ESEP says it's "very concerned that there is no comprehensive analysis, consultation, or scientific basis for the current weighting of WESP's function category scores."
However, Burton says, that WESP is a standardized assessment tool developed by Oregon State University and is used all over North America.
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