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| No, plans for the proposed mega-quarry have not been stopped. Currently the ball is in Highland Companies' (HC) court. The company submitted their quarry application in March 2011, which resulted in 5,000 public comments -- all need to be addressed. In addition, public outrage prompted the provincial government to mandate an unprecedented environmental assessment (EA) (legally pits & quarries do not have to undergo an EA in Ontario).
HC has no time limit. However, once HC responds to the objection letters, recipients have 20 days to reply. If recipients do not reply, then the matter is considered successfully closed.
As for the EA, the first step in the process is establishing the Terms of Reference (ToR). Again, HC is under no time constraint. It should be noted that the EA process is geared to compromise and will not stop the proposal, although it may slow it down by a couple of years.
In other words we are waiting ... raising awareness and funds for the upcoming fight. Oh, and we are trying to get the law changed so that other communities do not have to undergo the same unwanted and expensive disruption that Melancthon Township is enduring.
As for wanting cheap limestone, the cost of HC's aggregate is not cheap. In the guise of farmers, HC owns 8,000 of a 15,000 acre plateau of prime Class 1 vegetable farmland at the highest elevation in southern Ontario. The company is proposing to blast 1 billion tonnes of limestone from 2,316 acres and to manage 600 million litres of water every day. It is estimated that one million people rely on the water. There are several other aggregate companies with land holdings that have not been allowed to go below the water table. If HC is successful, then we will see the switch from farmland to quarryland, since the one-time injection of funds will be too tempting to ignore. Crazy, because as local farmer Brent Preston says “Aggregate sells for an average of $8 a tonne in Ontario. The salad mix I produce on my farm sells wholesale for $18,000 a tonne. I can produce salad in perpetuity. You can only mine a tonne of gravel once.”
Our fight is for fresh food and clean water.
Food & Water First!
For more info check www.ndact.com, the voice of the local farmers.
Edited by NoMegaQuarry 9/21/2012 13:57
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Melancthon Mega Quarry? (Ontario)
