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A new waterfront conservation area in the works for more than a decade is set to open in Mississauga at the end of the month.
Officials say the Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area has transformed a degraded industrial section of the waterfront into a sprawling green space. It is named after Jim Tovey, a late Mississauga councillor who was committed to environmental conservation.
The conservation area, all 26 hectares, is located along Mississauga’s eastern shoreline next to the emerging mixed use community of Lakeview Village. It opens to the public on May 30.
Stephen Dasko, Mississauga city councillor for Ward 1, said the conservation area was created by crews taking clean excess soil and construction rubble from around Peel Region and redirecting it to the site, where there used to be a coal-fired power plant.
“We wanted to take what was an industrial area where the waterfront really had been abused for decades and turn it back into something clean, green and sustainable,” Dasko said.
“Quite frankly, this should be the standard of what we should encourage others to do to embrace nature and the environment,” he said. “Instead of really cannibalizing our waterfront, we’re embracing our waterfront, welcoming the public here and having people learn as well.”
Stephen Dasko, Mississauga city councillor for Ward 1, says: ‘We wanted to take what was an industrial area where the waterfront really had been abused for decades and turn it back into something clean, green and sustainable.’ (Talia Ricci/CBC)
Dasko said the conservation area, which has teaching areas, was also created in collaboration with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
The site includes a network of trails, boardwalks, lookouts and gathering spaces, including an Indigenous Teaching Amphitheatre. The conservation area has an Indigenous theme throughout the green space, he said.
Credit Valley Conservation, a conservation authority in the Credit River watershed, Peel Region and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority worked together on the $60-million project.
Area will ‘bring people back to nature,’ manager says
Scott Cafarella, manager of capital projects at Credit Valley Conservation, said the area connects Marie Curtis Park in Toronto to Lakeview Village in Mississauga and its creation has restored a section of the shoreline.
It has a 170-metre boardwalk, 1.9 kilometres of new waterfront trail for pedestrians and cyclists and 1.8 kilometres of pedestrian-only trails, he said.
“It’s just a great way to bring people back to nature, bring them back to the shoreline where access didn’t exist before,” Cafarella said.
Cafarella said one of the biggest draws of the conservation area is viewing wildlife.
“We’ve seen so many birds and animals and fish come back and claim the space already,” he said.
“At this scale, to bring this level of restoration back to the Mississauga shoreline is a generational project.”
Scott Cafarella, manager of capital projects at Credit Valley Conservation, says: ‘We’ve seen so many birds and animals and, and fish come back and, and claiming the space already.’ (Talia Ricci/CBC)
The area has three new wetlands, five hectares of forest and five hectares of meadow, according to Freyja Whitten, program manager for terrestrial restoration at the Credit Valley Conservation.
“I think there’s been lots of new species coming in, which is great to see,” Whitten said, noting there are beavers, birds and coyotes, which have been in the area for a long time.
Her staff have been planting trees and shrubs to create future forests, managing invasive species and seeding areas that will be natural with native seeds.
“I think one of the things that’s most exciting is to realize that, 10 years ago where we’re standing, would have been Lake Ontario,” Whitten said. “So new habitat, new features.”
According to Credit Valley Conservation, the conservation area was created on the bed of Lake Ontario as a “lake-fill project” and is within the Head of the Lake Treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.