Parks are Critical Public Health Assets

As we enter a time of unprecedented climate change with increasing associated health risks of global heating and more frequent storm events, nature-based parks are a significant public investment. My colleagues and I show this in a recent article in the Globe and Mail.

Urban nature parks like Picton’s Delhi Park are critical public health assets: they reduce urban flooding and the heat island effect through through shading and cooling; they act as a carbon sink and a refuge for declining pollinating insects and at-risk songbirds. Most importantly, they provide quiet respite for local residents, for free. The evidence is clear and mounting from many studies that show nature-based assets like Delhi Park are not only good for our municipal bottom line and the environment, but for our mental health and physical well being. For example, cortisol levels (associated with stress) are measurably lower after people spend more than 15 minutes in a nature park. What’s more, a nature park adds demonstrable value to adjacent properties, and these benefits accrue rather than depreciate over time.

Many municipalities are challenged to provide more accessible and equitable access to natural parks for reasons that correlate with improved health and wellbeing. Urban planners are being engaged worldwide to provide more nature parks (not fewer) and to separate incompatible recreational uses from natural areas. Delhi Park is an excellent example of an existing investment in public health and climate resilience in a natural area. It is not the place for the paved, floodlit surfaces and noise of pickleball courts—a sport that may age out, leaving us with a stranded asset rather than the value-added, nature-based investment we’ve already got.

Put the pickleball courts at the fairgrounds where the necessary paved and wired infrastructure already exists. Leave the investment well-placed in nature to mature at Delhi Park for current and future generations. 

Prof. Nina-Marie Lister, TMU, Milford 

Key Issue not  Pickleball but Planning

The Gazette’s coverage of the proposed pickleball courts in Delhi Park (The Pickleball Park, News, July 15) highlights an issue that extends well beyond pickleball. This is about good planning.

No one disputes that the growing demand for courts should be addressed. The question is not whether Picton should have more pickleball courts. The question is whether Delhi Park is the right place.

I don’t believe it is.

Delhi Park is a mature park with environmentally sensitive areas connected to Marsh Creek, wildlife habitat, walking trails, and the Picton Community Gardens, built through years of volunteer effort. It is a place where people come to enjoy nature, find quiet, and connect with their community.

Once that character is changed, it cannot simply be restored.

What concerns me most, however, is the process that brought us here. Before committing at least $150,000 of public money to any project, shouldn’t residents expect Council to demonstrate that it carefully evaluated all reasonable alternatives?

The Picton Fairgrounds seem to be the obvious choice. They have long served as our community’s recreation hub. Parking and washroom facilities already exist. Sporting facilities already exist. The infrastructure is largely in place. Locating pickleball courts there would place them alongside other recreational amenities, where they naturally belong, while avoiding unnecessary impacts on one of Picton’s most environmentally significant parks.

It also makes sound financial sense. Why spend taxpayer dollars creating infrastructure that already exists elsewhere?

Yet Delhi Park somehow became the preferred site. Why? Has Council compared the financial costs of each location? The environmental impacts? Has it demonstrated why Delhi Park is a better choice than the fairgrounds?

Why is Council prepared to proceed with a $400,000 project before completing what should be one of the first steps in responsible municipal planning? The County’s own master planning documents identify the fairgrounds as a location for future recreational opportunities. They do not identify Delhi Park as the preferred location for pickleball courts. Yet somehow that decision appears to have been made before the broader community had an opportunity to meaningfully weigh in.

Public Information Centres are valuable, but they are not a substitute for genuine public consultation — before a site is selected. The more than 400 (and counting!)  residents who have signed the petition are asking Council to pause, examine the alternatives openly, complete the necessary environmental and noise studies, and explain why Delhi Park has been chosen over what appears to be a far better option. That is not opposition. That is good governance.

Joan Weinman, Picton