Multiple landowners appealed a municipal drainage report proposing a clean-out, dyke, and large pumping station for a watershed containing extensive forested lands and Provincially Significant Wetlands.
The Tribunal held that the appellants established, on a balance of probabilities, that the benefits of the pumping station and dyke were not commensurate with their estimated costs, relying in particular on accepted expert evidence in agricultural economics and other admissible technical evidence.
The Tribunal also found numerous errors and omissions in the report’s assessment methodology, including the treatment of forested lands, PSWs, pump-station benefit allocation, road omissions, and specific property assessments.
Because the pumping station and dyke were the report’s main element and the defects were too extensive to cure by amendment, the Tribunal set the 2017 Engineer’s Report aside in its entirety.
Municipal engineering-related costs were ordered paid from general funds, while the appellants and other parties were to bear their own costs.
