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CBM St. Mary’s Cement Inc., Bishopsgate Road, Burford

 

Comment on Environmental Registry (EBR 011-7914) until February 18, 2013.

 

 

Comment suggestions by Donna Baylis:

 

 

Objection 1:  Aggregate Master Plan Required

 

More and more Ontarians are paying attention to the way aggregate operations are being approved, operated, monitored and rehabilitated across the province, and what we are seeing is not good.  As a result we have demanded a review of the Aggregate Resources Act and its underlying policies – a review which was started by Premier McGuinty and to-date has consisted of an all-party Standing Committee on General Government holding hearings in Toronto, Orangeville, Kitchener-Waterloo, Sudbury and Ottawa. 

 

Fundamental questions need to be answered:

 

- Why is “need” for aggregate assumed? 

- Why does the approval process for aggregate licences avoid a “need” analysis?

- Why is Lafarge Manitoulin quarry shipping “a significant percentage” of product to the USA  if Canada is in such dire need?

- Why does the State of the Aggregate Resource of Ontario Study (SAROS) (Feb-2010) neglect to take Ontario’s largest quarry, Manitoulin, into account?

- Why does the aggregate industry alone have a legal requirement for “close to market”?  What about agriculture?

- Why are aggregate operations being allowed on protected green-space?

- Why are aggregate operations taking priority over prime farmland and food security?

- Why are aggregate operations allowed to go below the water table in source water areas without an environmental assessment?

 

Forty (40) years ago today’s proposals would not have been possible.  The technology and the infrastructure were not available.  Our capabilities have changed and the law should be adapted accordingly.  Also our values have changed, and the law should reflect that too.

 

Important values today are:

- Environmentally Protected Spaces – including the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Greenbelt, the Niagara Escarpment.

- Food Security – partly achieved by the protection of prime farmland (classes 1-4)

- Fresh Clean Water for All – as a human right.  It should be noted that the ARA as it stands is a back-door to owning Canadian water rights.

- Protection/Recovery Plans for Endangered Species

- Resource Conservation and Waste Elimination – through reduction, reuse and recycling.

 

I object to the establishment of this new aggregate resource until the Aggregate Resources Act has been reviewed (see Appendix 1 “Recommendations for Changes to the Aggregate Resources Act & Underlying Policies (2012)”) and a master plan for aggregate has been established.

 

 

Objection 2:  Tonnage Fee Will Not Cover Costs

 

Aggregate Licence Fees - $0.115 per tonne @ 1,000,000 tonnes per year:

 

$0.06 Township $60,000

$0.015 Brant County $15,000

$0.035 Province of Ontario $35,000

$0.005 Abandoned Pits and Quarries Fund (for rehabilitation purposes) $5,000

 

The dollar amounts expected from tonnage royalties will not cover the cost of the wear and tear on the local road system.  In May 2012, Marolyn Morrison, Mayor of Caledon and Chair of the Top Aggregate Producing Municipalities in Ontario (TAPMO), pointed out that the cost of heavy aggregate traffic on infrastructure warranted a licence fee of at least $0.93, more than 12 times the current rate of $0.075 for local government.

 

I object to this aggregate licence because the real cost to taxpayers is not being recovered.

 

 

Objection 3: “Interim” Land Use Questionable

 

At the same hearing, Marolyn Morrison, Mayor of Caledon, also noted that with transportation being upwards of 60% of the cost of aggregate “there is … a significant financial incentive to revive or extend the life of existing pits close to the GTA. Extending pit boundaries, extending years of operation, or quarrying beneath the water table, for example, are relatively cost-effective ways of extracting more resources.”  The recent decision to expand the Walker Aggregate pit in Duntroon – in the “protected” Niagara Escarpment – is a prime example.  In addition, the emerging task of recycling aggregate, or the need to dump fill from city development, or the need for waste management and landfill sites, mean that there is little likelihood that the pit will be closed in as timely a fashion as promised. 

 

I object to this application because weakness in the current Aggregate Resources Act would allow this pit to continue without an end in sight.

 

 

Objection 4:  Rehabilitation Unlikely

 

Gordon Miller, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, stated on May 7  that “because of the competitive pressure for land, pits now are often rehabilitated to residential or commercial developments.” 

 

Mr. Rick Bonnette, Mayor of Halton Hills and Vice-Chair of the Greater Toronto countryside Mayors Alliance, noted on May 16th   that “some landowners are very creative when it comes to quarry rehabilitation. Example: In Scugog, one of our communities, new owners of former quarries are claiming depleted sites are aerodromes, thereby using federal aviation legislation to bypass municipal oversight. When concerns are raised over the nature of the fill being dumped in the abandoned pit, municipal staff is told that local bylaws don’t apply since federal aviation regulations superseded them.”

 

Or sometimes pits never seem to get rehabilitated – like the various pits around Brant County.  Since there is no forced closing of a pit, a few truck loads of aggregate can be withdrawn on an annual basis so that the expense of rehabilitation does not have to be undertaken. 

 

Further, Mr. Miller notes: 

 

“There were changes in the fees some years ago, in 1997, to provide more fees, more money, for a number of things, including rehabilitation, but it remains a challenge to rehabilitate these aggregate sites. It remains a challenge to get the inspectors out there to site them or to give them rehabilitation orders, because there aren’t enough.

 

One special account of rehabilitation: When the fees were set aside back in 1997, they took a half cent per tonne and they gave it to an organization referred to as TOARC. Their job is to take that half cent per tonne and rehabilitate historic sites that were not rehabilitated back in the day. Now, these are sites which are often orphaned, if you like. They’re on people’s land, but the people who own it didn’t cause the problem. They were never closed, back in the day when we didn’t require them to be properly rehabilitated.

 

This is a good program. I cast no aspersions on it, other than: A half cent is not doing the trick. A half cent gets you about 45 sites a year. There are thousands of these sites. Increasing that to two cents would give you four times as many sites or more. It’s not a lot of money relative to the price of aggregate, but it’s certainly an area that could do with a lot of improvement. We could get a lot more of these scars on the landscape cleaned up.”

 

Finally, according to the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) “Depending upon whether you accept that there are only 2,700 sites that require rehabilitation, which is the position of the Ministry of Natural Resources, or 6,900 sites, which is the position of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, based on MNR’s own numbers, as the number of sites needing rehabilitation, the time it will take to achieve their rehabilitation ranges from about 90 years to 335 years, based on the current annual rate of rehabilitation.”

 

I object to this application because the necessary support and resources are not in place to remediate the site either at the end of the lifespan of the pit or if the pit operator should default.

 

 

Objection 5: Recycled Product Use Should Take Precedence

 

The Aggregate Resources Act does not require that the prospective site owner should prove “need” for aggregate.  Such blind demand coupled with royalty fees for consumption of virgin aggregate gives virgin product a distinct edge over recycled product.  This advantage is compounded further by the inconvenience and cost of establishing new processes, procedures, and sales programs to market the recycled product to clients.  

 

However, aggregate is a non-renewable resource and we have a responsibility to ensure that we use it to its fullest capacity. 

 

Realistically it makes little sense for a project to incur the cost of shipping rubble to a landfill, paying for the landfill, buying new aggregate and shipping it to the work site if the rubble could be processed, recycled and reused on-site, as in many cases.

 

I object to establishment of this new aggregate source because opening a new pit does not give the market the incentive to develop and use recycled product. 

 

 

Objection 6:  Shows a Complete Disregard for Water

 

When she was the federal minister of the environment, Christine Stewart wrote: "Water is more than a precious resource. Water is life itself. Unfortunately, too many Canadians think it's limitless. We say it's priceless, but we act like it's dirt cheap. We waste it and pollute it.” 

 

Residences, farms, businesses, wildlife, green space, all rely on water.  We are all downstream.  In a paper released early in 1999, The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) said, "Water is an essential need, a public trust, not a commodity. It belongs to everyone and to no one."

 

I object to approval of this aggregate licence application without a comprehensive environmental assessment re: below-the-water-table extraction. We should be educated on the costs and impacts of extraction in this area to our water.

 

 

Objection 7:  Poor Oversight & Enforcement by MNR

 

There are roughly 6,500 pits and quarries in Ontario.  The aggregate industry has operated on a self-inspection basis since 1997.  The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has a target to review 20% of the sites annually and otherwise relies on complaints to catch problems.  In reality, the MNR only has the resources to follow-up with 10%-12%3 so a site might be visited once in 5+ years.

 

I object to establishment of this new aggregate resource since the Ministry of Natural Resources is already stretched beyond capacity offering little to no oversight or law enforcement.

 

I support the Concerned Citizens of Brant.

 

 

* Notice that the above information has been gathered through private amateur research for the purpose of allowing the reader to make an informed and educated decision.  However, while the information is believed to be reliable, accuracy cannot be guaranteed. 

 

 

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