The Ontario Realty Corporation's environmental assessment of land it owns surrounding Stoney Creek's Eramosa Karst is being called "a bit of a sham" by the area's councillor.

Brad Clark said although reports aren't expected to be released to the public until next month, ORC officials have told city officials they've concluded there's no impediment to developing the lands for housing.

Doing so, he said, will ignore recommendations by karst experts to expand the protection zone around the 73-hectare karst, home to caves, sink holes, dry valleys and sinking streams created by dissolving limestone.

"It's very clear that there was a predetermined outcome. They want to sell the land, so they need to prove that it can be developed," Mr. Clark said.

"I really believe it's a political decision now," he said. "How can the premier stand up and boast about the preservation of the karst lands while at the same time he will be approving the sale of the land beside it for development, which is going to, in essence, over time, destroy the karst?"

In a recent interview, Imshun Je, the ORC's environmental assessment coordinator, told the Stoney Creek News the study will consider expansion of the karst's buffer zone as "an option."

But she acknowledged the focus is to prepare the 87 hectares of land located east of Mount Albion Road between Rymal and Highland roads for sale to developers because they are "surplus to government needs."

The largest parcel of land is an 80-hectare field to the immediate east of the karst. The other parcels are to the south, along Rymal Road.

Council has frozen development in the area and Mr. Clark said the city wants the ORC to donate the land to the Hamilton Conservation Authority, which assumed ownership of the existing karst park in the fall of 2006.

He said he doesn't see how the province can overlook the advice of experts who convinced it to preserve the karst in the first place.

"These are the people who actually understand the natural development of those karst formations," Mr. Clark said, contending that the ORC skewed the process by setting development as the study's goal.

"It was not to decide whether or not the land could be developed. That decision was already made."

Those backing an expansion of the buffer zone include Marcus Buck, a cave expert who played a key role in convincing the province to create the karst park.

In a letter last August, he expressed concern that construction in the area has already flouted recommendations designed to ensure neighbouring development doesn't alter water flows into the karst.

As an example, he cited "extensive dumping of fill" within the catchment of Nexus Creek - located on ORC land to the east - which flows into Nexus Cave, the karst's largest and rarest geological feature.

Co-author of a 2003 report that led Queen's Park to donate the karst to the conservation authority, Mr. Buck warned that altering water flows may change erosion patterns in ways that "may not become apparent for many decades."

That erosion may be exacerbated by road salt and other contaminants, he cautioned. In the case of hydrocarbons - the components of fuels like methane gas - they may "create explosive atmospheres within caves."

"Ultimately, the impacts from urban development cannot be predicted entirely and this leads to some uncertainty regarding protection of the karst," Mr. Buck wrote.