Salit Steel is in the process of significantly scaling back its operations in Niagara Falls and moving the bulk of that facility’s business to Welland.
It’s owner, Steve Cohen, whose family has been in Niagara Falls for 120 years, wants residents to know why.
“The City of Niagara Falls made, in my opinion, egregious planning errors,” Cohen told The Niagara Independent.
Because of past planning decisions that were made by Niagara Falls, and residential noise limits that followed, Cohen says there’s simply no way for Salit Steel to operate its business out of the same Niagara Falls facility in the way it did before.
Roughly 20 years ago, developers built a golf course on nearby land that was previously owned by a railway company. After a few years, developers went to the city and said that they wanted to build housing near the golf course.
Cohen says his company was informed about the building of the golf course, but not about the housing.
After multiple compatibility studies, which Cohen argues weren’t properly done, the housing development went forward.
About a decade ago, residents in the newly built community started complaining about the noise coming from Salit Steel’s steel fabrication facility. This led the provincial environment ministry to approach Cohen, and the noise concerns of residents suddenly became Salit Steel’s problem.
Cohen told The Niagara Independent that Salit Steel’s basic footprint hasn’t changed since roughly 2000.
However, the new housing development meant that, suddenly, Salit Steel had to comply with residential noise limits.
Once land has been zoned as residential, surrounding industry has to comply with these limits, even if industry was there first.
Cohen says Salit Steel conducted its own noise study, showing there should have been a 500-metre buffer between its facility and any new housing, rather than a 70-metre buffer, as was recommended in the city’s feasibility study.
But, because the housing was already built, there was little Cohen could do.
To try to comply with the noise requirements, Salit Steel started shifting some of its operations elsewhere, renting land in both Welland and Port Colborne.
But there were some noise requirements that Salit Steel felt simply could not be met while maintaining operations at its Niagara Falls facility.
And so, the tough decision was made to shift the bulk of Salit Steel’s current Niagara Falls operations to Welland, costing the company between $15 million and $20 million.
Cohen notes that his company isn’t the first to experience problems related to housing being built near industrial areas and, without changes, it won’t be the last.
After Cohen relayed his story to individuals in the Ford government, including Premier Doug Ford himself, the province amended provincial regulations to allow Salit Steel to make noise within a 500-metre buffer zone, even though houses are within that range.
However, Cohen says he found out about the changes too late, well after he began shifting operations to a new Welland facility. On top of that, Cohen still would have faced the ire of nearby residents.
“Good, hardworking people are going to blame us, and that’s not fair,” said Cohen about shifting his company’s Niagara Falls’ footprint to Welland.
Cohen instead suggests that residents and employees look to what he feels are clear zoning errors made in the past by the city and point the finger at previous occupants of City Hall.
The Niagara Independent reached out to Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati’s office for the city’s perspective but did not receive a comment as of press time.
Jay Goldberg is the Canadian Affairs Manager at the Consumer Choice Center. He previously served as the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a policy fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Jay holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
