Warning – Landscape Advisory Committee

SREL would like to convene a landscape advisory committee, which would include representation from cottagers, a municipal Councillor, and local full-time residents and businesses. This would be a good thing – at the right time.

However, there are several aspects of their currently-proposed Option 2 which simply don’t have a good answer and foisting the responsibility of the resulting controversial decisions onto the community appears to be the purpose of this committee.

For example:

1. The height of the fence around the look-out 18′ above the Moon River and over the turbulent water exiting the power station:
   • If the fence is waist-height (similar to a bridge over a highway or the railing of an apartment balcony), then there will be the new danger of little kids climbing the fence or bigger kids trying to jump into the river (as already happens from the railway bridge over the North Channel). This is a recreational area, and just as nobody lets their little children play along a highway, such a low fence (no matter how “unclimbable”) would not be in keeping with the current children- and family-friendly nature of the area.
   • If the fence is higher, then it would be an isolating, unrecreational safety fence, completely changing the look and feel to both people near the falls, and viewing the site from the Moon River.
2. The driveway. As shown here, SREL initially proposed the driveway be at the same grade as the top of the power station (with a 75′-long retaining wall along the Moon River, as shown here). More recently, SREL has provided this drawing which appears to show that instead the driveway leads to the side of the power station. This would reduce the height of the retaining wall and eliminate the need for their initial plan for a concrete stairwell 15′ down into the power station, but would result in the Power Station rising above the driveway, just as your garage does at home. The Power Station will already loom 18′ over the Moon River. With the driveway approaching the side of the Power Station, the project certainly should not be described as “buried in a park”, as SREL continues to maintain.
3. “Grassed Driveway” – now there’s an oxymoron. Who in Muskoka has a grassed driveway, it just won’t happen, certainly not with a truck driving over it a few times per week.
4. The Gate. As currently designed, the Power Station requires an 18′-high, 33′-wide steel gate above the Moon River (this can be lowered to block off the water from the Power Station when the turbine requires servicing). The plan is to have a false wall in front of this gate, and to put boards or something else onto this false wall to make it look less imposing. This would be like trying to hide a 33′-wide highway billboard at water level, facing all the boaters on the Moon River (it would also be a prime graffiti target). There just isn’t a way to make this look natural.

In summary, there are no good solutions to the above and other landscaping questions, because it is wrong to put the power station adjacent to a recreational area. The landscape advisory committee is a great idea whose time has not yet come, let’s agree on where the power station should go first.