Sauble Beach dunes dispute heading to court

Save our dunes sign in Sauble Beach Ont. on Dec. 16, 2020. (Scott Miller/CTV London)

Sauble Beach, Ont. — A local business owner has filed a request for a judicial review to halt plans to alter Sauble Beach’s sand dunes.

Tom Laforme filed the paperwork this week to start court proceedings to try and get the project stopped permanently.

“I am very disappointed in the Mayor and council decision of moving forward now in the spring," he says.

Many other groups like Friends of Sauble Beach and people all over Ontario also do not agree with this bad decision,” says Laforme.

The Town of South Bruce Peninsula wants to remove a part of the sand dunes along 469 metres of lakefront, in order to allow cars to park, more safely, on Lakeshore Boulevard.

Mayor Janice Jackson says “trimming back” the dunes, would allow for cars to be completely off the road, when parking along the beach, whereas now, they can’t always get completely off the road. She calls the current state of the sand dunes a safety issue.

The planned work was subject to a large protest earlier this month, by local residents, and members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, who currently have a land claim pending on the disputed section of Sauble Beach lakefront.

An injunction by Ecojustice, has delayed the planned dune work until spring.

Laforme and others hope to get the Grey Sauble Conservation Authority permit to do the work, deemed null and void by the court, therefore stopping the Town of South Bruce Peninsula from proceeding with what Laforme calls, “dune destruction.”