On July 10, 2007, Judi Brouse, a District of Muskoka employee, filed the attached affidavit outlining all the "research" that she had been doing in support of Pieper's request for a re-hearing. Oddly enough the date and place the affidavit was sworn coincides with the date and place that the developer's consultant swore out his affidavit in support of the appeal. In retrospect, this was the first of many intimations that District staff were working hand in hand with the developer.
What really shocked us in this document is her claim that development has no effect on water quality. She attempted to "prove" this by compiling a list of building permits issued for Waseosa since 1974, claiming that the water quality has not deteriorated substantially since then. Somehow she didn't make the connection that over half those permits were for the installation of septic systems!
The District's entire Lake System Health Program is based on the premise that development degrades water quality and that provisions like site plan controls and modern septic systems are important to control this degredation and here she is contradicting that very premise in "support" of that same premise.