The Mega Quarry is dead, and so now begins the post mortem, the dissecting of the fight that led to a corporation’s surprise decision to give up and cut its losses.

On Wednesday, Highland Companies, the American-backed company behind the proposal to build a massive quarry on prime farmland in Melancthon Township, cited a lack of government and community support for its withdrawal. The ‘Stop the Mega Quarry’ folks claimed victory.

Ask the experts, and they’ll tell you how the stars aligned for quarry opponents — an eclectic mix of local farmers, aboriginal people, urbanites, environmentalists, celebrity chefs and rock stars. The opposition, they say, defined Highland from the get-go, and the quarry came to represent issues people were already thinking about. Never, they say, underestimate the power of indignation and a good story.

Highland’s first problem began in 2006, when a man, John Lowndes, came around offering to take the land off the hands of local farmers. Lowndes, farmers say, touted a vision of becoming the largest potato producer in the province. Offered prices above market value, about 30 sold.

While Highland has said there were discussions about “different land uses” and that the company made good on its promise to farm, some locals said they sold, or considered selling, only because they thought their land would remain farmland.

“Obviously, there’s a simple remedy for companies in the future going forward, and that is: Don’t do that. Because obviously, it does come back to bite you,” said Queen’s University marketing professor Ken Wong.

“When you’re proposing something, there’s no experience base to go by. And especially when you’re new to the community, they don’t know you. They’ve never done any business with you, so why should I believe you?”

He added: “And this is an instance where a lack of disclosure is as much a lie as a blatant lie ... That notion of ‘It’s easier to say I’m sorry than it is to get approval.’ In initiatives like this one, that does not apply.”

There have been quarry fights in Ontario before, but those have largely been thought of as local schisms. Never has one pulled such a broad base of support and media attention.

David Simmonds, a senior consultant at public relations firm Navigator Ltd., thinks the quarry’s location on prime farmland and the current focus on local food played a key role.

“It leveraged what is becoming a culture of cool around food in Toronto, and that gave people a very easy thing to be excited about and to say no to,” he said of what he calls a “latent group of supporters.”

Another issue championed by quarry opponents was potential damage to pure water supplies.

“Coming on the tails of some of the disasters we’ve had in this province with water supplies, I think any time you talk about ... damage to the water table, you’re going to get politicians’ attention,” Wong said.

Add to that, the narrative of an American-backed company that hired a multinational public relations firm. Highland, thinks Simmonds, could have been helped by a local champion who could talk about benefits the quarry would create, such as jobs. “You have to get people to understand the value locally, and I’m not sure that they were able to do that,” he said.

While kudos must go to the locals who stood up first and said, “No, we’re not going to take this,” the scales really began to tip when the heavyweights started stepping in, Simmonds said — Chef Michael Stadtländer, who brought droves of chefs to 2011’s Foodstock and last month’s Soupstock, rock musician Jim Cuddy and big-name environmentalists like the David Suzuki Foundation. Urbanites who have weekend homes in the area also helped the cause.

“People who organize by profession, and organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation ... You can’t underestimate the value they brought to the table once they got involved … they professionalized the (community) organization,” said Simmonds, adding that it would be naïve to cast this story as simply a David versus Goliath tale.

“When you have Hollywood celebrities, musicians and David Suzuki — who’s a giant in his own right — lending their support to something, then it turns out to be a bit of a fairer fight,” he said.

Wong points out that when so many elements coalesce, it’s easier to see the government potentially stepping in, whether that’s using “moral suasion” or the threat of legislation.

Halfway through the quarry application process, the province subjected the project to an environmental assessment, a first for an Ontario quarry.

“And frankly, that’s the classic moral suasion: ‘We can’t stop you, but we can make it difficult,” he said.

The sheer size of the project — the quarry would have been one of the largest in North America, about one-third of the size of downtown Toronto — mattered too, said Winnie Ng, who holds the Gindin Chair of Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University. That the company promised it would, while mining smaller pods, revert the quarry floor back to farmland over 50 to 100 years gave her pause.

“None of us are going to be around 100 years from now; you can promise the moon,” she said, noting that people get indignant when they perceive insincerity.

“You never underestimate what indignation can do,” she said. Volunteers spent thousands of hours writing letters to politicians, selling lawn signs, speaking at elementary schools, tweeting, organizing art shows and walks.

In an interview earlier this week, Highland principal John Scherer said the company will be focusing on growing potatoes. President John Lowndes has stepped down. Asked whether there was anything he thinks could have been done differently, Scherer said:

“I guess as we reflect, we did not do a good job of engaging the local community from the outset ... and because of that, I think there’s a lot of misinformation that got circulated and got put out, and I think that we didn’t do a good job, really, of trying to correct that misinformation as well. Our kind of message got lost.”

So can this case be used as a template for other burgeoning grassroots protest movements?

“I think we need to be careful about extrapolating an instance as best practice,” Simmonds said. “There’s so much involved in this particular issue — so many actors, so many moving parts — that it would be hard to say it could be easily replicated.”

By Jayme Poisson

With files from Jessica McDiarmid

Published in "The Star", Nov. 23, 2012

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1292408--the-mega-quarry-what-went-right-what-went-wrong