Quarry Issues

Issues: Forestry,  Quarry,  Council,  Demolition,  Water, Home

 
On this page you will find a link to the presentation made by The Highland Companies on July 25, 2009. This is a fairly large, 10MEG, pdf file that will require a fast Internet connection for easy downloading. To access this file, click on the Highland image below:  Delegation to Melancthon Council August 13, 2009 by Dennis Sanford Response to Highland Companies Open House Material You have heard a lot of people express their views and emotions here in this room, in the newspaper and in private no doubt, about the quarry application by The Highland Companies. I want at this time to add my voice to the discussion by way of offering a critique and raising questions about the promotional package you received at the Highland open house several weeks back: a presentation designed and intended to convince and gain our confidence about the company’s “vision” and their competence. Now, it is very obvious that this was a one-sided presentation, and one would expect a company to present their side of the story in the best light possible, building up where necessary, omitting damaging facts where necessary, in order to win over and convince as many people as possible. This was an effort in self promotion firstly. A distant second priority is the presentation of information, as what was presented was very shallow and highly slanted. I think we would all probably agree that deception and manipulation at any level in this forum would be unethical and ultimately self-defeating. I see a lot of that here. What they have done is “spin” the story and the image to be most favourable. They have done this by clever image and word selection, by careful omission, and by offering selective facts. I think it is the duty of the opposing view to expose those omissions and fill in the gaps, so that there can be a balanced view of the real story. A fair assessment and judgment is possible only when all sides are open to the light. You will be hearing from many experts, and asked to read technical reports from both sides of this debate in the coming months. These experts will be far more knowledgeable in their fields than you or I can ever pretend to be. I will freely admit that I am no expert in the fields of science and engineering that will be needed in this debate, but then neither are you, and most of the people residing in this township. So I, like you, must rely on my ability to research on my own, listen carefully and critically to those knowledgeable in the subject, and using common sense and a rational mind form judgments of my own. Here is some of what I see in this propaganda and some things they did not tell you at the open house: Why an open house? They forgot to mention that the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) requires it before application. A Sustainable Township Sustainable: a popular buzz word used several times in this document. As if to say that what is going on now is not sustainable. AGGREGATES They show a “rehabilitated” quarry in England (more on that later) instead of what will be the common site: rocky holes in the ground with heavy equipment going in and out of the hole. Farming Largest grower, packer and distributor of potatoes in Ontario: That may be so, but remember that they bought their way into that position very recently, and if it were not for the hard work, experience, and expertise of the people who spent decades building what they purchased, they would be nothing. Maintaining our farming heritage: How? By removing 2400 acres from agriculture? Aggregates: Strengthened township: How so?? I would suggest that a united community exhibits strength, not one that has been bought out and de-populated. Taxes and fees equivalent to residential taxes: an clear enticement targeted at whom? Council? Ratepayers? Is this some kind of leverage? Rail Did you notice there is no mention of the rail spur line in the quarry presentation, and the impact a rail line and rail traffic would have on the township. They may say that it is a separate issue and that the quarry can operate without it, but if they are allowed to purchase the rail lands, this will be a part of the new reality for the township. Wind No mention anywhere in the display boards, or in the slick “fly-by” computer rendering of the presence of wind turbines. This too will become a part of the overall vista if they put in a quarry. Interesting omission! Community Involvement The photo shows views of Shelburne. We all may use the shops and services of Shelburne, but I thought this was a Melancthon issue, with all of the pains and any gains residing in the township, not the Town of Shelburne. The items on this page lay out part of their “invasion” strategy. Aggregates and our way of life May be true facts, but this is inserted as guilt propaganda. The reality is that Melancthon already produces more aggregate than it consumes, and that virtually all of the product that comes out of the ground will go to service the growth of GTA (and maybe foreign markets). So, what is wrong with a little fair trade in our capitalist system, selling products we have to those willing to buy? The fact that it is outside money buying its way into the community in order to extract the most it can at the lowest price, leaving the problems it creates behind as it takes massive profits out. The Melancthon Quarry It may be located in Melancthon Township, but it really has nothing to do with our rural farming community. It should be referred to as the Highland Quarry. They are trying to make it sound as if the quarry is part of the community. Let’s not be fooled into tacit acceptance and ownership of this foreign invader. Carbon and Energy Neutrality Carbon. They just had to get this popular “buzz” word in there. Carbon neutral is a rather dubious concept at best, but energy neutrality? That’s a new one for me. Of course what is missing are the small details like: How many turbines and where are they going to go? Responsible stewardship This is a rather puzzling page. I don’t get the point. Although I might liken it to your doctor saying, “Your body is in very good health, but there is however this one little spot over here showing on this x-ray …” Proposed licensed area The quarry will straddle the former Highway 24? One has to wonder about how trucks/equipment/crushed limestone will be moving across the roadway. I don’t expect they will have two processing plants. The video fly-by presentation showed the processing plant on the opposite side of the road to the active quarry. Safeguarding natural features So, good soil for growing food is not a natural feature? Now we get down to the real nitty-gritty: Water Management This page is absolutely unbelievable. It is a ridiculous, absurd and misleading comparison. I don’t know who they were trying to fool with this one, but it defies belief that a professional of some discipline would even suggest such a ludicrous comparison. Firstly, no competent house builder would ever put a foundation below the water table. The problems during the construction would be bad enough, but dealing with the water problems from year to year would be horrendous, totally undesirable and expensive. Secondly, comparing the management of water around a house foundation to that of a 2400 acre hole in the ground is a bit like comparing my ability to control my lawn sprinkler to that of my ability to control the output of a rain-shower that extends from here to Shelburne. This proposed quarry is similar to the quarry that St. Mary’s Cement (originally owned by Lowndes Holdings) wants to create near Hamilton. ( You have a recent story from the Hamilton Spectator included in the correspondence for this week which you may have read already. There is much to learn from the process that is taking place in Flamborough. A community action group named FORCE (standing for “Friends of Rural Communities and the Environment) has been battling St. Mary’s for years now. Go to their website stopthequarry.ca if you want to learn what has been going on there.) The similarity lies in the fact that the company wants to extract below the water table, digging about 40 meters down, and they have a “plan” to inject the water back into the ground in order to replenish the groundwater. The company has been unable to demonstrate that this Groundwater Recirculation System (GRS) can work. Ministry approvals have recently been denied until a system can be proven. FORCE has hired consultants to study and prepare reports on a number of concerns, most importantly the hydrogeology of the area to be quarried. INTERA ENGINEERING LTD. of Ottawa recently submitted a hydrogeological review to FORCE that contains many damning statements. A few noteworthy examples include “there are no identifiable examples of proven successful application of GRS at deep permeable fractured dolostone bedrock sites similar to Flamborough” and “there are numerous credible and probable means by which the GRS will fail to perform in accordance with requirements” and “As acknowledged by the proponent, the failure of the proposed GRS will create significant lowering of the groundwater tables away from the quarry causing unacceptable adverse hydrologic and hydrogeologic impacts on the surrounding wetlands and local private water supply wells” and finally “GRS remains an unproven technology for the proposed Quarry site”. As part of the INTERA report there are maps and diagrams. One particular diagram here caught my eye. It shows a cross section of the quarry area, and a projected draw down in the water table that extends 2 kilometers from the edge of the quarry. By reviewing the proponents application documents on line at the FORCE website, I learned that the proposed quarry is a 380 acre site, the quarried area will be 238 acres and the final rehabilitated state will be a 207 acre lake! As I understand it, the Amabel formation here in Melancthon is similar to that in Flamborough, so I would guess that the challenge of the GRS would be similar. Experts on both sides will no doubt be making their views known on the technical aspects in the coming months, but reading what I was able to easily find on the internet coupled with my own common sense tells me to place no credence in what the company is trying to sell us. What they are proposing is a massive experiment, with a huge potential for irreparable damage. Managing water I particularly like this line for its audacity Bottom Line: No adverse effects on water. Here we have it, something in black and white, well brown and white actually, to record and remember. But could we see this in a legal contract with something like a billion dollar penalty clause for when they fail? They won’t put that into writing! Even if they can prove that a GRS will work, think about this for a moment: the clean, thousands of years old groundwater that flows into the pit will pick up contaminants, oxygen, and heat, and then be forced back into the ground for you to drink. ( the oxygen and the heat could very well allow bacteria to grow in the water.) Minimizing Noise and Dust The key words here are” Noise and Dust”. Minimized? Maybe, but still present, and to what absolute value in such a large scale operation when the winds channel the dust in one direction? Controlling truck traffic WHERE ARE THE TRUCKS?? They sure are doing a good job controlling here, because I don’t see any trucks! Nowhere did I see any projection of the number of trucks that Highland expects on the road. The traffic consultant at the open house would not reveal the number to me. They know, but they won’t reveal that yet. There is a quarry application in Caledon put forward by James Dick Construction Limited, called the Rockfort Quarry Project that has been in process for over twelve years. Maybe you have heard of it. From the company’s website you can obtain the following information: The whole site is 220 acres with 145 acres set to be mined. They are looking to remove 39 million tons over a 30 year time frame. This would mean an average of 1.3 million tons per year. Now here are my calculations on the truck volume for the Rockfort quarry: Depending on the sizes of the truck doing the hauling (38 ton or 16 ton), there would be between 131 and 312 trucks driving into and then out of the quarry every day. That makes for 262 to 624 trips. Divide this by the 12 hour work day they plan, and there will be one truck on the road every 2minutes 45 seconds to 1 minute 9 seconds average. The Highland Quarry is more than twice the active extraction area of the Rockfort, so by extrapolation we can probably expect between 525 and 1250 trucks on the road, mostly heading southbound. This means one truck every 34 seconds up to one truck every 1 minute 22 seconds for twelve hours every day, five days a weeks. I would feel sorry for the people living on those routes and for anyone that tries to drive the roads during the hauling shift. Proposed haul routes Imagine that many large trucks trying to move through the intersection at County Road 124 and Highway 89, bunching up at the traffic light. The two minute light cycle there would not be fast enough, and you might expect a traffic jam several kilometers long. And what about the school bus pick-ups on 124 in the morning, and drop-offs in the afternoon? Returning our site to agriculture There are a lot questions raised by this grand scheme. I have serious concerns about the viability of this “deep hole farming” concept by itself , let alone the inextricable link to the water issue already mentioned. Farmers I have talked to don’t think it can work. Can the Company show us a successful working example of this concept? I don’t think so, because there isn’t one. (Wouldn’t they be showing it off if there was?) So, why should I be concerned if their plan is folly and does not work at their own expense? The failure will leave a huge permanent scar on the landscape with huge potential unknown impacts, and a large chunk of Melancthon’s farmland will be gone. Rehabilitated slopes They did not include an indication of where the water table is in this cross-section . Also, How do they propose to deal with the water that one would expect to percolate through the sides of the slope so carefully covered in mature trees? The deeper you go the higher the hydraulic pressure would be, so will they be able to keep any stable soil near the bottom to grow anything in? So many questions! Aggregates to agriculture Here is an excellent example of “spin” and omission. All of the quarries pictured here are quarries that are above the water table, not below. Quarries that are below the water table naturally turn into lakes. The Rockfort quarry in Caledon and the St. Mary’s quarry in Hamilton are below the water table extraction, and both have a final rehabilitated state as a lake, not agriculture. They could not put a picture of agriculture below the water table here because there is no such thing. Progressive Rehabilitation Sequence The small print here says “adapted from Mackintosh and Mozuraitis 1982”. The diagram comes from a 39 page book printed by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources titled Agriculture and the aggregate industry: rehabilitation of extracted sand and gravel lands to an agricultural afteruse, by E.E. Mackintosh and E.J. Mozuraitis. I am still looking to find an actual copy to see where the adaptations occur, but I would guess that the blue dotted line and lettering saying “existing water table” is one of the changes, based simply on the title including the words “sand and gravel lands”. This was not a deep quarry rehabilitation study. You will also notice that there is no indication of the time frame involved here in order to get from the left side of the pretty diagram to the right side. When asked, the consultant who was in charge of this particular display board said that it would between 8 and 10 years, if there were no weather related delays, no decrease in demand for the quarry products that might slow the company. When I said “how about 12 or 15 years?” his response was “yes, it could be”. Community Benefits The second page touting their community involvement. All part of their strategy to charm and disarm. In conclusion, I like to say that I can I understand how some of you may feel that your hands are tied by a process that leaves much of the final decision making to higher levels of government and governmental boards and agencies. The constraints of the rules and regulations of your office will be influencing your actions as well. But I must say that you do your constituents no service by not at least declaring your position on the matter. By abdicating your responsibility to serve and protect your community, you let your community down. You have a wealth of dedicated, passionate, hardworking, community-caring people right under your noses. These are among those who elected you to your current privileged position. You can become their allies, or their adversaries. If you think that the Highland Quarry will benefit the community beyond the potential pitfalls, then declare yourself, and work to convince us. If this were election time then you would be doing exactly that. Stating your position, then working to convince us. If you think that this Quarry is a bad idea then have the courage to declare it so, and work with your community to defend against this assault. I think that you would find the majority of your constituents would support you, many of them enthusiastically. What we are looking for is strength of conviction and strong leadership. This project can be stopped. This project must be stopped. Only the strength of a united community will succeed. Thank you. Dennis Sanford Melancthon The following from the Township of Melancthon web site: Highland Companies will file an aggregate application within 3-6 months June 17, 2009 – For Immediate Release The North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Task Force, Inc. (NDACT) has learned via a letter from the Melancthon planning consultant, G.W. Jordan, to Melancthon Council that The Highland Companies has advised they will file for an aggregate licence within the next 3-6 months, depending on the completion of technical studies. The application will be for a quarry with extraction below the water table. The Highland Companies has amassed landholdings in Melancthon and Mulmur Townships, in the County of Dufferin of over 6,000 acres of prime agricultural land. Evidence of significant core sampling, well testing, tree cutting, archaeological and other studies that are being conducted on the lands have all been consistent with pre-testing for aggregate/limestone extraction. “This is very disturbing,” said NDACT Chair Dale Rutledge. “This open pit mine will take some of the best agriculture land in Ontario out of production and is in a location that is recognized as one of the primary sources for water recharge feeding the Nottawasaga and Grand Rivers,” he added. NDACT is a community-driven organization representing the hundreds of people who live in North Dufferin County including Melancthon and Mulmur Townships. The primary concerns of NDACT are loss of non-renewable prime agricultural land, deforestation, impact on water, environment, wildlife and wetlands. NDACT is holding a public information meeting Saturday June 20, 2009 at the Honeywood Arena, 706114, County Road 21 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Please attend this critical community meeting, learn the issues, ask questions and voice your opinions. More Information: Dale Rutledge, Chair c/o info@ndact.com or visit NDACT’s website, www.ndact.com mailto:info@ndact.comhttp://www.ndact.com/http://ndact.com/NDACT/DC-2501004.pdfshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1