Hidden Quarry fight goes before Ontario Municipal Board

An eight-week Ontario Municipal Board hearing begins Tuesday over Hidden Quarry, a controversial proposal east of Guelph, which will pit environmentalists and three municipalities against one of the largest aggregate extractors in Southern Ontario. 

We're burning five times the fossil fuel to get the poor quality stone into Toronto, as opposed to using the close to market, high quality stone.-James Dick Construction Limited spokesman Greg Sweetman, on why the proposed Hidden Quarry is good for the environment.

James Dick Construction Limited, which already operates 18 gravel pits in the province, wants to dig a new quarry at a site along Highway 7 at Sixth Line, a kilometre from the Town of Rockwood, about a 20-minute drive from Guelph. 

The company wants to excavate 700,000 tonnes of dolomite, a material that the company says it would extract over a period of 17 years using a controversial blasting technology that environmentalists say threatens local groundwater and would disrupt wildlife.

At the heart of the dispute is the thorny issue of how to balance local environmental concerns with the province's voracious appetite for aggregate, fuelled by highrise demand in downtown Toronto and an ambitious plan by the Liberal government to repair Ontario's vast and crumbling network of roads and bridges.

Not enough to go around

"When we build highrises there's a higher demand for the highest quality materials that we're running short of," said Greg Sweetman, the resources manager for James Dick Construction. "This is the quarry that will produce material for building up rather than out."

Dolomite stone is prized by construction companies for its quality and versatility as road base material, railroad ballast and as an aggregate for high quality concrete used in the construction of bridges, airport runways and skyscrapers.

"The CN Tower is built out of dolomite," Sweetman said. "The first major concrete remediation job on the CN Tower is scheduled for 1,200 years from now. The reason for that is it was built out of the right materials."

There isn't enough of it to go around, according to Sweetman, which is why the province finds itself in its current infrastructure crisis.

Company claims quarry would reduce pollution

"How many bridges have we seen around Ontario that we've built and 30 years later we're ripping them down and building them again? That's because we're building things out of the wrong materials."

Hidden Quarry would not only produce more high quality building materials, according to Sweetman, its proximity to Toronto would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We're burning five times the fossil fuel to get the poor quality stone into Toronto, as opposed to using the close to market, high quality stone," he said.

The biggest environmental concern however, isn't over air quality, according to the Concerned Residents Coalition, a group of environmentalists and people who live near the proposed quarry site who aim to stop it.

Drinking water, trout habitat threatened

Water quantity and quality is the biggest concern, with the CRC claiming the controversial blasting technology being used by the company will disrupt the water table and has the potential to drain wells upstream from the quarry site as well as threaten the quality of local water.

"We have information to suggest that there's a real possibility of contamination," the group's president Doug Tripp said, noting at least 100 families who live on farms and in suburban homes draw their water from wells within a kilometre of the proposed quarry site.

Tripp said the proposed Hidden Quarry site also threatens local wildlife by displacing the northwest portion of Brydson Creek, a high-quality cold water habitat for brook trout and a headwater tributary that feeds Blue Springs Creek, the Eramosa River and the Grand River. 

We have information to suggest that there's a real possibility of contamination.- Concerned Residents' Coalition president Doug Tripp

"Brook trout is a species that is under some environmental pressure," he said. "Brydson Creek and Blue Springs Creek, we're told by Trout Canada, is one of the very few remaining cold water streams in Southern Ontario."

"We're looking at an issue of competing priorities," Tripp said. "We're arguing that what is absent here is a comprehensive planning strategy on behalf of the province that can adequately take into account these competing priorities."

"We believe if there were such oversight, that the Hidden Quarry would be an inappropriate place to extract aggregate," he said. "Hidden Quarry is not unique, we think we may be one of the poster childs for what's wrong." 

 Annoying the neighbours

Hidden Quarry doesn't just threaten to drain wells, dirty waterways and disrupt trout spawning grounds -— there's also a real possibility that the traffic generated from shipping all that rock could pose a safety hazard to nearby communities.

It's why the municipalities of Halton Region, Halton Hills and the Town of Milton have thrown their collective weight behind the fight to stop Hidden Quarry. 

They too worry about the effect the development will have on local water, but it's the industrial traffic generated by moving tonnes and tonnes of rock that worries Colin Best.

The town councillor believes the estimated 200 to 300 dump trucks hauling rock from the gravel pit each day will bypass Acton and come down Fifth or Sixth Line through his community.

Roads aren't meant for gravel trucks

"Those roads aren't meant for gravel trucks," he said. "They're just rural roads and they aren't meant to handle heavy loads of traffic."

Best believes Hidden Quarry, situated on Highway 7 that divides Wellington County to the north and Halton Region to the south, represents just the tip of the spear.

"The same quarry operator has bought two or three other properties," he said. "If you allow one, it sets the precedent that it might be the whole north side of Highway 7 could turn into quarries, which is also in the Greenbelt area."  

Best said he plans to attend in order to highlight his community's concerns at the OMB hearing, which gets underway today in Eramosa and is expected to last eight weeks.