Part 2: Stelco has hinted it might leave if Nanticoke development proceeds

The main risk posed by a massive development proposal for the village of Nanticoke in Haldimand County is that Stelco — Haldimand’s biggest employer — may pack up and leave if a new town of 40,000 people is built on its doorstep.

“Stelco has been very vocal that if we go ahead with this development and bring houses there, they will move,” Haldimand Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley told The Hamilton Spectator.

A senior executive with the steelmaker told Haldimand council as much during a meeting shortly after Empire Communities’ proposal to build 15,000 homes inside the Nanticoke industrial park became public knowledge.

“This puts us at risk,” said Trevor Harris, Stelco’s vice-president for corporate affairs, at a March 2022 council meeting.

Rezoning the lands around the company’s Lake Erie steelworks to residential, Harris said, “will have a negative impact to Stelco and its future operations.”

“Based on the information we have before us here today, we can provide you no assurance that we will be here in 20 years,” he told council.

“There is nothing in that proposal that gives us any confidence that we could survive that type of development.”

Harris did not divulge specifics about the company’s concerns for the future of its Nanticoke plant, and he did not respond to an interview request for this story.

Bentley worries an influx of complaints from new residents confronting the loud and smelly reality of living near a steel plant could prompt the steelmaker’s exit.

“How would they be able to please everyone? I just don’t think they could,” she said.

Stelco already pays to clean the properties of Nanticoke residents whose homes are blackened by particulate from the steelmaker’s blast furnace, Bentley noted.

“You have lots of noise, lots of dust, odors,” she said. “(Stelco) has gotten a lot better with their pollution control, but you still get that dust.”

Losing 1,500 full-time jobs — plus thousands more contractors out of work — would significantly cut into county’s bottom line, the mayor added.

“They’re good-paying jobs that come with pensions, and those people contribute to our economic development every day,” she said.

“All of these workers and pensioners from both Stelco operations would be negatively affected if Stelco decides to close and move elsewhere.”

Some residents are “scared” for relatives and friends working at the steel plant, said Coun. Stewart Patterson, who retired from Stelco after a 30-year career as a millwright.

“The reality is, Stelco has put in close to a billion dollars in recent years modernizing that plant. I don’t believe it’s going to go anywhere,” said Patterson, whose ward includes Nanticoke.

Based on his conversations with Stelco brass, Patterson said the company “just wants to make sure the plant survives and they can still do business.”

“And I get that,” he said.

“We as a council and senior staff don’t want to lose an important tax base like Stelco, and the amount of jobs. Everybody knows somebody who works there. We want it there for the long term.”

Nanticoke’s other major industrial employer, Imperial Oil, has been more circumspect about its future in Haldimand.

In a letter sent to the county in April, refinery manager Jody Grant said the company “is supportive of responsible development towards the long-term economic health of Haldimand County and the province.”

Grant said the county’s official planning amendment process “should be followed to ensure stakeholder feedback is received on this proposed significant change of land use with broad impacts on the neighboring communities. We do not support utilizing a (minister’s zoning order) in this situation.”

The Nanticoke refinery has been a community fixture for 45 years, currently employing about 500 people and producing 20 per cent of Ontario’s transportation fuel, according to the company.

Imperial Oil would like to see the province maintain designated industrial lands in the Nanticoke area to “allow for potential future uses in support of a successful energy transition in Ontario,” Grant wrote.

“We look forward to being directly consulted in this process going forward, and working together to ensure that any future development is compatible with the ongoing operation of the refinery.”

Political hot-button

In February, Haldimand’s mayor fulfilled her main campaign promise to “say no to the MZO” by putting forward a motion to rescind the previous council’s request to the provincial housing ministry to issue a minister’s zoning order to rezone the industrial land and allow the county to start reviewing Empire’s proposal.

“In March 2022, (the past council) asked the minister for a MZO. It was only a few weeks prior that they’d heard about this project,” Bentley told The Spectator.

“I just think it was so quick. And there was no public consultation back then, and that’s why I asked for it.”

After two rounds of public consultation revealed a split opinion in the community, with a majority of respondents not supporting the development but some hoping it would lead to a cleaner future for the industrial area, council voted 4-2 to keep the MZO request in place.

“I was disappointed,” Bentley said.

“When I was talking to people and knocking on doors during the campaign, they said they didn’t want this. And a lot of people didn’t know about it. And still to this day, some people are unaware that this is a proposal.”

The vote would likely have been 4-3 had it been held after a recent byelection in Ward 4, where former Haldimand mayor Marie Trainer eked out a win over former councilor Tony Dalimonte.

“The major reason I entered this campaign was because I am against building 15,000 homes next to Stelco and Imperial Oil,” Trainer told The Sachem on election night.

Queen’s Park should take note that three members of the seven-person council now oppose the development, Trainer said.

“I would hope the province would take a look at how close the vote was, and that the party in power will take a good look at the history there,” she said.

Haldimand-Norfolk’s independent MPP, Bobbi Ann Brady, knows the history well. Her former boss and predecessor as provincial representative, Toby Barrett, remains a vocal opponent of Empire’s plan.

“We do not put people next to blast furnaces or major oil refineries or coke ovens,” Barrett told councilors at a public consultation about the proposal.

When asked by Brady at Queen’s Park on June 5 about opening up an industrial park to residential development, associate housing minister Nina Tangri highlighted the need for housing near industry so employees “can get to work much faster rather than sitting in commutes for hours.”

“By allowing housing to be built around those employment zones, we’re making it easier for people to get to work (and) raise their families,” Tagri said.

But Brady pointed out that while some future Nanticoke residents might work at Stelco or Imperial Oil, most will commute elsewhere, further clogging up an already overtaxed Highway 6.

“Chaos across the Highway 6 corridor and the inability to meet the health-care needs of the current population has made people concerned about adding 40,000 people to the area,” Brady said, calling the proposed development “not responsible.”

“Two elections have been fought on this issue, and voters feel an industrial park is not the place for a city,” she said. “Surely we’re not so desperate to build houses that we would subject newcomers to life in Ontario’s largest industrial park?”

Complaints about industrial pollution could “drive out” Stelco and Imperial Oil and put “thousands of locals out of work,” Brady continued.

“Haldimand County needs these good-paying jobs, and an industrial park is where they should remain.”

Part Three of this series looks to another planned community for answers while confronting the question of Haldimand’s future as an idyllic rural county.

—With files from Tamara Botting and Tara Lindemann

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at The Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.