Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Melancthon Mega-Quarry threatens ‘A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow’


From western hills,
To northern shores.
To Niagara Falls,
Where the waters roar.
Give us a land of peace,
Where the free winds blow.
And we will build Ontario
A place to stand, a place to grow
Ontari-ari-ari-o!

- 'A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow', lyrics by Dolores Claman, 1967.
In 1967, ‘A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow’, one of the films commissioned for Expo’s Ontario Pavilion, won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Subject. Commissioned by Progressive Conservative Premier John Robarts, composer Dolores Claman perfected the jingle, and filmmaker, Christopher Chapman, developed the ‘multi-dynamic image technique’ to show autumn leaves turning colour, farmers tilling the land, and fall vistas as floating panels on the pavilion’s widescreen.

Broadcast repeatedly on television to celebrate Canada’s Centennial, 100 million people saw this promotional film for tourism, which has become the unofficial anthem for the province of Ontario. I was one of them. I grew up singing this jingle as a small child, and it is hardwired into my memories of a halcyon time when Ontarians had the illusion of infinite, rolling farmlands and resources. A massive, open pit quarry is next on the Liberal agenda, enabled by a 1969 law that says that gravel must be mined as closely as possible to where it is used, in this case, the ever-expanding, exurban edge of Toronto.

The Places to Grow Act was enacted in 2005 by the Liberal government to ensure that the fruit belt in Niagara and the green belt of the Oakridge Moraine, and its freshwater aquifers feeding into Lake Ontario, were protected from then startlingly aggressive development of subdivisions. In 1978, it was first recognized that the fruit belt was becoming asphalt, shopping centres and subdivisions, and today, E.D. Smith trucks fruit into its Grimsby factory, as this fine, fertile farmland no longer supplies Ontario fruit for its jam.

A poster child for this soon-to-be bygone rural Ontario, Melancthon Township is threatened by a development of a 2,100 acre aggregate quarry, with a capacity of mining 6 million tonnes of limestone at an unlimited amount annually. The mega-quarry is proposed is to be deeper than Niagara Falls, at 200 feet below the water table. The North Dufferin Agricultural Community Task Force (“NDACT”) is leading the charge with their with their petition site against Baupost, a Boston-based hedge fund representing investors with holdings estimated at $23 billion.

In 2006, Highland Companies acquired 7,000 hectares of the land under the pretense of potato farming. The cost of the land was $80 million for Baupost; a market estimate of the real value of these limestone resources at $120 billion, a 1000 per cent mark up, while Baupost pays $1.2 million in taxes to the township.

Upon acquiring the land, Highland promptly tore down 30 homesteads, cut thousands of trees, and began digging test holes in preparation for their real purpose, extraction of the underlying limestone. Extraction companies call trees and soil ‘overburden’; Melancthon Township farmers call this grade A soil ‘Honeywood Silt Loam’, and their livelihood. The water is close to the surface, the soil is so rich it has its own classification, and generations of Ontarians downstream have been supplied their water sources and fed from Dufferin County produce.

Highlands proposal, as submitted, calls for the management of 600 million litres of water. Since their plans call for farming in the “rehabilitated” pit, this means this water will have to managed forever. Their application calls for 24/7 blasting, except on statutory holidays, crushing plants, and at maximum capacity and peak market, 3,200 trucks loaded and 3,200 empty trucks in and out of the plant every single day. These trucks will pass by farms, schools, businesses and head to unknown areas, as the traffic study in Highlands proposal shows no impact or routes for this traffic after Primrose (Hwys 89, 10 & 24). The Highland Rail Corporation, a subsidiary of the Highland Company has purchased the Orangeville rail line and is lobbying Dufferin County Council and other municipalities in Grey County to purchase the rail line to Owen Sound, yet their application is not specific as to what they will be shipping.

The water at the site of the proposed quarry will be diverted from a watershed which is fed by the Grand, the Nottawasaga and the Pine rivers, and in all probability will be contaminated by the residue of the aggregate, diesel, and blasting compounds, which would result in a million people downstream will no longer have access to this uncontaminated water. If you live in southern Ontario, look at your tap. You could be drinking this aggregate soon. Ontari-ari-ari-o!

The David Suzuki Foundation has protested this massive pit as it will deplete fish species, the National Farm Union on the grounds of farmland preservation, the Council of Canadians on the grounds of water scarcity, and CAUSE (the Citizens for the Alliance for a Sustainable Environment) has put up an informational site. Nearby residents have been protesting the sleight of hand by Highland by changing their proposed land use from potato farming into open pit limestone mining without notice. Even the Conservative Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones has asked for an enquiry into this environmental study.

Melancthon Council is currently having in camera sessions to debate the Highlands zoning and environmental applications without pesky citizen input, and Premier McGuinty is sending out his usual form letters citing review processes such as the Water Resources Act, the Aggregate Resources and oversight from the Ontario Municipal Board as processes yet to be invoked, as if they will make a difference to the rapid sell off this land, which, incidentally, should be protected as part of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Highland Companies has a laughably content thin site to justify this quarry, where they have posted a video of an aerial view of their extraction plan, with a voice of God voiceover ponderously describing their best practice methodology for sustainable extraction. Over its 40-year lifespan, only two pits will be open at any given time, this deep voice booms, and berms of natural foliage will be placed around the quarry, obscuring the view of the pit, and buffering the sound of continuous blasts of dynamite from the adjacent farms. There is no dust in this video, no line of dump trucks snaking down rural roads, no shaking of the ground, and it looks a bit like an excerpt of Sid Meier’s video game, ‘Civilization’, in which you build communities to see what will happen when you place a hypothetical, open mine quarry in the middle of a historic county. Except in this turn-based strategy video game, this quarry is being built without the consent of the farmers, this county is called Dufferin, and there are many farming families which will be displaced. 'Civilization’s’ goal is to “Build an empire to stand the test of time”; so should the Ontario government’s.

As a cautionary tale for the future of this project, a documentary directed by Antony Baxter, “You’ve Been Trumped”, was shown at Hot Docs this year, in which Donald Trump destroyed a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Aberdeen, Scotland, in which he replaced pristine sand dunes and beaches to build two golf courses, and 1,500 condominiums. The Scottish government would not grant a broadcaster’s license for this documentary, so it was premiered at Hot Docs for world distribution. Word on the street is that the Scottish government regrets that they allowed the construction permit, worth thousands of millions of pounds, to the Trumps to build two gaudy golf courses in a country chock full of tasteful courses, such as St Andrew’s, and would prefer that Scots not witness their gaffe on TV.

In response to the Township’s outrage, the Liberal Minister of Natural Resources, Linda Jeffrey, stated in February 2011 to the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Melancthon in an one on one meeting, “It is too bad that this has split your community apart. It is your job to get your community together, get them to think long term about rehabilitation, because this will not be going back to agriculture, but maybe you could get a nice golf course.”

Posted on the Stop the Quarry! Facebook page, there is a very funny drawing done by a Melancthon Township resident, Gail Prussky, in which she shows their compensation for the gravel pit. Her inscription "When the limestone's gone, we won't be sorry. We'll have a lovely little farm at the bottom of the quarry..." In fact, the bottom of the mega-quarry could easily hold 15 golf courses.

The Melancthon Township Quarry application has been proposed to the Ministry of Natural Resources to ensure that tonnes of aggregate will be shipped to the United States and abroad, and promises a mere 88 jobs. As our federal legislation for extraction processes are as outdated as our perception of our water and farmland as boundless, this quarry will be a blight on our landscape, a toll on our water sheds, a UNESCO heritage site lost for us all and a drain on taxpayers.

And if Premier McGuinty allows an American company to externalize the cost of extracting their $8 a tonne gravel on our watershed, farmland, transportation network, and health care system, included as part of his ‘green policies’ as a mistaken asset, he will pay the electoral price in six months. Extraction is finite; as is water; farming lasts for generations.

The invaluable Ontario farmland of my youth is being sold off to not only the lowest bidder, but for a 6-billion-tonne quarry which will undercut Ontario’s food and water sovereignty to ensure that we need to import what was once grown locally- witness the E.D. Smith jam factory in Grimsby - and purchase clean water which once flowed freely from these headlands. To whom, and where, will we turn to buy fruit, vegetables and water when our own resources are in short supply, sold off for 12 cents on the tonne, undermined by our own outdated and inadequate environmental legislation, Ontario Municipal Review Board and the Liberal’s policies on natural resource management?

To quote Premier McGuinty: “If you have not already done so, I encourage you to submit your comments for consideration through the Registry's website at http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca citing EBR number 011-2864, before the July 11 deadline.” Please do so, and request a full Environmental Assessment of this project.

Many thanks to Gail Prussky for her quote and drawing, and Karren Wallace, for fact checking.

References:
CAUSE, the Citizens for the Alliance for a Sustainable Environment information at http://www.citizensalliance.ca/Cause-proposal.html
Environmental Registry to submit your comments at http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca, citing EBR number 011-2864, before July 11th
Jacob Wolinsky, GuruFocus, ‘Seth Klarman Buys Land Worth $120 Billion for $80 Million!’ at
http://www.gurufocus.com/news/129627/seth-klarman-buys-land-worth-120-billion-for-80-million
Kathryn Heming and Andrew Sheppard, ‪Melancthon Mega Quarry‬ video at http://youtu.be/I8ZkwK22hqI
Stop the Melancthon Quarry! at http://stopthemelancthonquarry.ca/
The North Dufferin Agricultural Community Task Force (“NDACT”) Petition at http://www.ndact.com/NDACT/Petition.html
Wayne Roberts, NOW, ‘Open-pit politics: “Eat my dust” could well be the legacy of obsolete laws unearthed in mega-quarry fight’ at http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=180790

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