WALK TO STOP THE QUARRY
STOP THE MEGA QUARRY
OPEN PIT MINE
Starting: Earth Day, April 22, 12 pm, Queen’s Park at noon
Finishing: Dufferin County, Melancthon Township, April 26
Five Day Walk with Native drumming and singing beginning at Queen’s Park, ending Melancthon Township, Ontario, Canada to ask Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Opposition Leaders Tim Hudack and the Hon. Andrea Horwath, the Right Hon. Stephen Harper, the Hon. Jack Layton, and Elizabeth May, to STOP THE MEGA QUARRY OPEN PIT MINE.
A US Hedge Fund, Baupost, based in Boston, operating in Canada as The Highland Companies, has applied for a license to build an enormous open pit quarry, 2316 acres, 100 km north of Toronto in Melancthon Township. It will be the second largest open pit mine in North America, largest in Canada. The quarry will destroy for ever thousands of acres of prime productive farmland. The area chosen is the highest point in Southern Ontario, right on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, an officially declared UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Below this valuable land lies priceless limestone which filters the water and an aquifer that is the Headwaters of several major river systems in Southern Ontario. The quarry will severely damage these valuable water systems which originate in this area, Ontario’s food supply, and the drinking water of more than one million people. Thousands of acres will be blasted 200 ft below the water table! As proposed it is one-third the size of Toronto. A serious concern is that the Highland Companies own more that 5000 adjacent acres. This gravel may be for export out of Canada.
It’s difficult to imagine how very, very bad this mega quarry will be. It will be a social, cultural and environmental disaster for everyone in Southern Ontario: the people, the farms, the forests, the water and the wildlife.
Please join us at Queen’s Park Earth Day, April 22nd at 12 pm, or anywhere along the walk
Danny Beaton
Turtle Clan, Mohawk, Ontario, Canada
416-921-0014 beatondanny@yahoo.ca
www.dannybeaton.ca
Brian Danniels
searunner34@gmail.com
(647) 862-3596
Supporters of the Walk to Stop the Quarry
Council of Canadians
Maude Barlow
Mark Calzavara
www.canadians.org
Sierra Club Ontario
Dan McDermott, Director
http://ontario.sierraclub.ca
NDP
Honourable Andrea Horwath
MPP (Hamilton Centre)
North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce
Carl Cosack, Vice Chair for NDACT
cosack@zing-net.ca www.ndact.com/
Dianne Lister
Board member of CAUSE www.citizensalliance.ca
Citizens’ Alliance for a Sustainable Environment
Preseveration of Agricultural Lands Society
Dr John Bacher
(PAL) http://people.becon.org/~pals/
Unicamp
www.unicampofontario.ca
Walk Route:
* Depart Queen’s Park Friday April 22
* Brampton
* Caledon Village
* Orangeville
* Camilla
* Shelburne
* Arriving Melancthon Township, Dufferin County April 26
For Walk updates please contact
www.ndact.com
www.citizensalliance.ca
Facebook Stop the Quarry
From Council of Canadians communique re Mega Quarry, April 2011
“The Highlands company started buying farmland in Melancthon several years ago saying they wanted to become the province’s largest potato growing operation- which made sense to local farmers as the area is well known for its particularly high quality soil and micro-climate. … After many local farmers had sold their farms –some of which had been in the family for generations- the real motives of the company became apparent. Under that rich and rare soil is a fortune in high quality limestone worth upwards of eight billion dollars. … There is little doubt that they intend to excavate the entire 8000+ acres. To do so, Highland will strip off all that precious soil then blast their way down more than 200 feet BELOW the water table.
From the area around the proposed mine site spring the headwaters of river systems that are important drinking water sources for more than one million people downstream. The Nottawasaga River, the Grand River and the Pine River systems will all be threatened by the mine’s 600 million litre per day dewatering pumps. Massive amounts of toxic demolition explosives will be used to smash the limestone and hundreds of dump trucks per hour will enter and leave the site- 24 hours a day, 360 days per year. The company rightly points out that this is all allowable under Ontario’s aggregate extraction laws but the problem is that those laws couldn’t be more favourable to the industry or more rigged against communities that want to protect their water.”
From page 75 of OMB decision on Rockfort Quarry Application, November 2010
“Too much of enormous value to the Province, the Region and the Town could be lost if the proposed quarry went forward. A failure in the mitigation measures proposed for the quarry, as set out in the AMP, would have a catastrophic impact on the natural environment or the natural features and functions of the area. Such an impact cannot be countenanced by the Board. In addition, the fundamental change to the character of the area attendant upon the proposed quarry would not be acceptable. The loss of views of rural lands, the loss of a cultural heritage landscape and cultural heritage resources and the conversion of a rural area into an urban area centred on a heavy industrial operation cannot be permitted in the interest of the production of more aggregate for infrastructure development. It is time for alternatives to aggregate for infrastructure construction to be found. Too much of what is essential to the character of this Province would be lost if aggregate extraction were to be permitted on lands like the subject property. Lands situated in a significant cultural landscape, surrounded by significant natural heritage features and functions, are not lands on which extraction should be permitted in the absence of demonstration of no negative impacts. No such demonstration has been completed in this case.”
The whole of Niagara Falls would disappear
in a mega quarry open pit mine of this size
Site Maintained by Peppersoft Inc.
Please count me as one of many that I know that opposes this mega-devastation, and let me know how we can help band together to stop it.
I am deeply disturbed to hear about this quarry. It must not be allowed to go forward as outlined. I would like to hear about other strategies to stop it from happening.
Pat Moore
Why am I always surised when I find out that yet again our goverment is out to rape us…..where is the accountablity to the people that pay their wages……where is the logic (in their wallets), our childrens future is at risk….it is time that the majority stood up and spoke out…..enough is enough….no more being cattle mooing and moving, as we walk to our deaths….
Please keep me informed as to what the government is doing to stop this travesty.
Having been betrayed by our local and provincial governments over the gravel pits being developed in former Pilkington Township, which ironically is home to the Pilkington Scenic Lookout just down the road from one of the pits, I have great sympathy for the residents of Melancthon Township, who are already burdened with windmills. This project is outrageous in its dimensions, particularly in its proximity to a UNESCO biosphere! When is this madness going to stop? The proposal would be nothing short of an environmental tragedy.
As a farm boy in the communist era of 1955 they destroyed my family life, I see no different what is happening here in Canada; only they destroy it with so called democracy. Love Canada dearly gave me an education and brad to feed my family; I will give my life for the country. Our government is no different than the red star.
Thise people are for big bucks and don’t care for the simple working class, we Canadians should wake up and start thinking what is the best for all of us, until then they will take whatever they want.
THIS PROJECT MUST BE STOPED, WHAT I CAN SEE THIS IS NOT CANADIAN BUSINESS BUT INTERNATIONAL MARKEING, AND EXPORTING.
REGARDS
jr
fresh water is becoming scarce in the world,rivers everywhere in canada are becoming polluted.this mine will go 200 ft below the water line,they will use 600 thousand litres of fresh water a day,they will destroy 40%of ontario,s potatoe crop which is only an hour and a half from toronto,when will our governments quit making corporations so powerfull that they can,t fight them.we need a leader that doesn,t want a job with the rothchilds or rockefellers when he,s finished as prime minister in four years
The Earth is our Mother not our enemy,
There has been no clear transparent consultation with the Mohawk Nation regarding the Haldimond Proclomation that gives them Treaty Rights over these said lands that are a proposed quarry?????
The Mohawk Nation wants to be consulted regarding the supposed quarry lands.