A Slippery Slope For Ontario Lakes

Jim Hayes | Aug 07, 2025

A Slippery Slope for Ontario Lakes 1 Foot Down” petition to oppose a precedent setting new zoning by-law for the dense development of “Gravel Point.”

The densest area of development alone proposes 5 cottages/septics, 2 bunkies, a trailer site, a community centre, 2 gazebos, 5000SF cleared waterfront activity areas, a multi-craft main dock, and a road network in only 4.7acres. The Hall’s based their density calculations on 34 acres, then crammed everything onto the point.

The development would remove 2/3 of the vegetation on this narrow 90m wide erosion prone peninsula, directly over the lake’s main MNRF protected Lake Trout spawning area and proximal to endangered Blandings Turtle marsh/fen wetlands.

Shockingly, Frontenac County has given the project its support. The township council will soon vote for or against this threat.

Although of significance to all Palmerston dwellers, the only public meeting was posted Dec 12 2022 and held Jan 13 2023 - clever. The application included a custom by-law written for the applicants by their planner, also a contracted county planner. Severe waterfront exemptions and uses were included: B&B, place of worship, school, kennel, home based business and more. Community pressure has caused the applicants to backtrack and claim they never intended to use this carefully crafted list. Nevertheless, “home-based business” has been retained and is vague and precarious on a lake.

Craig Hall has stated that “The public is not good at understanding the law and therefore we rely on elected officials and staff… to balance the ‘real’ concerns…”

However, it was lake residents who discovered the “real” concerns: the blatant and obviously purposeful omission of the Lake Trout spawning bed directly below the dense development, false claims of following MNRF protocol (such as surveying for turtles for 3 hours in 100% cloud cover), and incorrect septic flow calculations. Then there is the mysterious “disappearing” of red-headed woodpecker, nesting merlins, and a foraging otter.

The applicants attempts to circumvent the Township Plan has placed a significant burden on the local lake association and strained taxpayer dollars. Township and cottage association funded peer reviews uncovered many deficiencies such as density, risk to the spawning area, endangered species, etc.

Lake residents recognize the risk. The Hall’s support the alternative; to run an experiment to see if our lake suffers the same fate as 5% of Ontario’s Lake Trout population - Extinction! Ontario contains 20-25% of the world’s Lake Trout lakes. What could go wrong?