Part 1: Controversial development plans in Nanticoke will shape future of Haldimand County

Would creating a lakeside city inside an industrial park be Haldimand County’s folly — or its salvation?

Empire Communities sparked a passionate debate about the future of the rural county when the developers approached Haldimand council last year with a plan to build some 15,000 homes and light industry on 4,200 acres of industrial land surrounding Stelco’s Nanticoke steelworks.

The expanded town of Nanticoke would sit just west of an oil refinery and the site of a since-demolished coal-fired power plant.

Empire’s proposal to house 40,000 new residents in a “provincially significant employment zone” — areas designated by the province for industrial development and declared unsuitable for housing — would almost double the county’s population and turn the village of Nanticoke into the largest community in Haldimand.

In advertising for the project, dubbed Your Nanticoke, Empire promises a “bright future” that includes 110 acres of publicly accessible waterfront, recreational facilities such as an indoor pool, a park and trail network, 2,000 affordable housing units “for young families” and a new sewage treatment plant.

All of this without a tax increase, the company says, and with the creation of more than 10,000 jobs.

Proponents of Empire’s plan say Haldimand cannot afford to reject the opportunity to add much-needed water treatment infrastructure on the developer’s dime while finding a new use for industrial lands that have sat empty for decades.

“My feeling is the positives far outweigh any negatives that could be,” Haldimand Councilor Stewart Patterson, whose ward includes Nanticoke, told The Spectator.

“There are going to be some bumps in the road, but the big thing is the added infrastructure that there’s no way we could afford as a county on our own.”

But critics — including the local MPP and mayor — say allowing thousands of people to live near giant industrial polluters makes no sense and is only asking for trouble.

“Why are we wanting to develop in an industrial park? We need industry,” Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley, who was elected on her opposition to the Nanticoke development, said in an interview.

“They provide a great tax base for us, and they provide jobs for people who live in our community. Why would we want to challenge that?”

Another relevant question is who would want to live inside an industrial park. Nanticoke’s several hundred residents are quite familiar with the loud and smelly reality of living near a steelmaker and oil refinery. Even as pollution control has improved in recent decades, airborne grime from the smokestacks still coats cars and homes in the village.

A recent study of air quality in nearby Hamilton found unhealthy levels of a cancer-linked contaminant across the city — including in neighborhoods kilometers away from polluting bayfront industries.

“People will see brochures, will see a website that proposes something very beautiful,” Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady told The Spectator. “And they will be from out of town, and not entirely realize what they have purchased until they are living there.

“That’s when the problems will begin.”

The file now sits on the desk of Housing Minister Steve Clark, who will evaluate the county’s request for a “minister’s zoning order” (MZO) that would rezone the industrial lands to residential so Haldimand can begin to formally review Empire’s proposal.

Empire did not respond to an interview request. On its website, the company says it “fully support(s)” Haldimand’s request for an MZO to “finally open the door for discussion around the future of land that for over 40 years has been wrapped in red tape and restricted to industrial uses.”

Bentley said the county has not heard from the minister since the MZO request was submitted in March 2022, and Clark’s office denied Bentley’s subsequent request for a meeting to discuss the MZO’s status.

In an email to The Spectator, a spokesperson for Clark said “the ministry has no new information on this matter at this time.”

The spokesperson did not respond to questions about the general timing of decisions on MZO requests.

Granting an MZO is not akin to approving the development.

The county wants the MZO to include a holding provision to allow for “a robust, open and transparent local planning process” that would incorporate technical studies, design review and public consultation, including with the nearby Indigenous communities of Six Nations and Mississaugas of the Credit.

But Clark’s decision could indicate the government’s willingness to build on provincially designated industrial lands to meet its targets for new housing.

Clear benefits

Haldimand council has rarely faced such a large decision.

“The creation of a new community of this size and scale is unique in the province,” reads a staff report to council written by then-chief administrative officer Craig Manley when the project was introduced in early 2022.

Councilors must balance the need to grow the tax base and create thousands of jobs, with concerns about maintaining the county’s rural character.

Several elements of Empire’s plan make it hard for council to turn down.

The developers have pledged $100 million toward a $180-million countywide wastewater treatment system that Haldimand needs for any development to proceed in Nanticoke.

That money would fund a new wastewater treatment plant in Nanticoke with enough capacity to allow the county to decommission smaller facilities in Caledonia and Hagersville, as well as outdated lagoons in Townsend and Jarvis.

An existing wastewater lagoon in Nanticoke that services Stelco and other local industries could also be decommissioned if the new facility were built.

Nanticoke is already home to a massive water treatment plant that can supply clean drinking water to the proposed development, along with other parts of Haldimand as well as neighboring Norfolk County and Six Nations.

The county will need more wastewater treatment capacity within the next decade “regardless of whether this development goes ahead,” said Patterson, the municipal councilor, who noted sewage is already being shipped via pipeline from the “maxed-out” lagoon in Jarvis to the Townsend lagoon.

Housing developments planned for Hagersville will soon exhaust the capacity of that town’s wastewater treatment plant, he added.

Having Empire foot the bill for a new sewage treatment facility in Nanticoke “would take a lot of obsolete infrastructure off the books,” Patterson said.

Empire purchased the Nanticoke lands in 2021 after they were put on the market “under a court-ordered proceeding associated with the bankruptcy of the former US Steel company, with the proceeds being used for the pension for former workers,” according to the report from county staff.

Prior to the sale, the province and county had spent more than 40 years marketing the lands to heavy industry — with little success. Companies were turned off by the prospect of having to spend significant dollars on servicing for natural gas and wastewater treatment in the Nanticoke area.

“Once they realize there’s no infrastructure in the ground, none of these large corporations are interested,” Patterson said.

The county itself did not have the money to front-end the needed infrastructure investments and make the lands “shovel-ready,” former CAO Manley explained.

Factor in Haldimand’s small population, which limits the local labor force, and the lack of access to a 400-series highway, and most industries took a look and moved on.

In light of those drawbacks, Manley concluded it was “highly unlikely” the Nanticoke lands — some of which are currently being farmed — would ever be developed as strictly industrial properties. Allowing a portion of the land to be converted into housing, as Empire is seeking, makes development of the whole area “much more feasible.”

And as the lands are outside the Haldimand Tract, there is less risk of Indigenous land defense actions that have stymied several planned housing developments in Caledonia.

Patterson is attracted by Empire’s proposal to develop 40 per cent of the lands as commercial or light industrial “to even up the tax base,” which he described as currently “one-sided” in favor of residential.

“To me, that helps the county,” Patterson said.

The 1,700 acres of commercial and industrial land would be situated closest to existing industry, creating a buffer between Stelco’s Lake Erie Works, the Imperial Oil refinery and the new houses, said Stephen Armstrong of Armstrong Planning and Project Management, a firm representing Empire.

No homes would be built within 300 meters of industry or 500 meters from the dozens of industrial wind turbines dotting the landscape.

Armstrong estimated the newly serviced employment lands would bring in between 7,500 and 11,000 new jobs in sectors such as warehousing and distribution, shipping, battery storage and information technology.

Another 7,000 to 8,000 jobs are projected to spring up as the enlarged town of Nanticoke would require stores, schools, health-care and financial services, and other amenities.

But Haldimand’s mayor doubts those promised light industrial jobs will measure up to a career at Stelco in terms of wages and benefits.

“Is it going to be grocery stores? Pizza parlor?” Bentley said.

“Is it going to be good-paying jobs that will pay for a $900,000 home, or is going to be minimum-wage jobs that maybe you’ll be able to pay your rent with?”

Part 2 of this series looks at the major risks critics say the development poses to the county’s economic future.

—With files from Tamara Botting, Tara Lindemann and Matthew Van Dongen