[URBAN NOTE] "Island life coming to Humber?"

[rfmcdonald]

Now this is just a cool idea. Toronto could use more offshore islands, I think, in addition to the venerable Toronto Islands. So what if they're artificial? The Toronto Islands are so expensively maintained as to be practically artificial themselves.

Thoughts?

The earth dug out for the Eglinton light rail transit line could be turned into islands in Lake Ontario.

[. . .]

The string of islands would go in at the mouth of the Humber River and extend about one kilometre from shore. The plan would take clean fill from construction jobs to build a solid earth barrier underwater that would deflect polluted Humber River water out into the lake and away from Sunnyside Beach.

Above the water, the feature would look like a string of small islands that could be landscaped, support wildlife and made accessible to the public, city councillors on the public works committee were told Tuesday.

“You could design this to have pedestrians come out to the islands,” said Toronto Water general manager Lou Di Gironimo.

“You could connect the islands. There’s many ways to design them, we could make it a very attractive feature.”

Final plans would depend on what comes out of a $3 million environmental assessment of the Humber concept and a similar plan to build a stormwater management wetland at the Ashbridge’s Bay sewage treatment plant.

If approved by council, the environmental assessment could begin next year and allow detailed design to begin in late 2014, the committee was told.