One size doesn't fit all.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NEWS - Pickle Lake Mayor Karl Hopf plans on township development

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Pickle Lake Mayor Karl Hopf said his northwestern community is being "handcuffed" by a one-size-fits-all provincial policy that's stonewalling future development.

Drafting a new Official Plan for the township of 425 has stirred the pot on a four-decades-old environmental legacy issue that's resulted in a standoff between the municipality and three provincial ministries.

Red flags have been raised from the presence of arsenic in old surface tailings from a mine that closed in the 1950s. Hopf contends the province wants to curb new development along a highway corridor that the municipality wants to set aside for business opportunities.

The township is now at loggerheads with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in refusing to sign off on a new Official Plan until the province finally commits to remediating the site.

"For 40 years, they keep saying it's a health issue," said Hopf. "Well, let's fix it."

The discovery of gold in the 1920s near the shores of Pickle Lake brought people north, creating company towns and the creation of the township in 1980.

The Pickle Crow Mine closed in 1966. Closer to town, the Central Patricia Mine mined its last ounce in 1954.

Until the early 1990s, when provincial mine closure plans with required financial assurances were invoked, miners could walk away from these hazardous sites after their operations closed.

At the mine site, Hopf said the volume of tailings has never been accurately measured despite four provincial studies being done, the last in 1989.

To what extent it represents an environmental or health hazard, or the levels of contamination to the local watershed, has never been fully assessed either.

In the late 1970s, the province offered a paltry $4,000 stipend for residents living near the former mine to leave. Ten homeowners still remain.

And there are further concerns about potential subsidence issues from old underground workings.

Hopf said the last study indicated it would take 250,000 cubic metres of fill to cover a tailings area of roughly two square kilometres, a multi-milliondollar job that the township can't be expected to pay for.

Most frustrating is a new provincial restriction not allowing any new development within 1,000 metres of the former mine's still-standing headframe.

Under Ontario's Planning Act, until issues from man-made hazards, like a mine, are addressed or rehabilitated, development activity isn't permitted.

Conceivably, Hopf said, 700 acres...