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As the Save Gold Bar Park group has found, up until 2017 the City of Edmonton had a long-standing plan to develop future wastewater operations at the Alberta Capital Region Facility outside the city; directing wastewater flows to that site makes far more sense than Epcor’s intentions to expand industrial operations and sewage processing in a prime river valley location over the next 50-75 years.

Meanwhile, the solar-power plant proposal seems disingenuous on multiple levels. Not only did Epcor’s own business case show that it would be less expensive to invest in alternative energy off-site to power its operations, the proposal also disregards solar best practices, which state that habitat alongside rivers is not an appropriate location for solar panels.

As conservation organizations, we strongly support the shift to solar energy — on rooftops and brownfields. Such appropriate placement would prove Epcor’s and the city’s commitment to the environment. Epcor’s plan instead to take over riparian habitat and public parkland disregards the unquantifiable ecological and social value of this land. It also runs against the city’s acknowledgement in The Way We Green that, “in a given year more natural areas are still lost than protected. With biodiversity on the decline around the world and in Edmonton, new tools are needed to achieve the city’s biodiversity commitments.”

One new tool is prioritizing environmental value over short-term economic value. The river valley corridor is the most important source of biodiversity in our city.

We urge city council to reject both river valley land rezoning proposals and protect our “ribbon of green.” Let’s focus our energy instead on further restoration of this incredible asset.

Kristine Kowalchuk writes on behalf of Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition. Simone Klann writes on behalf of Save Gold Bar Park Alliance.