AWARE-Ontario.ca
Comment on
Environmental Registry (EBR
011-7914) until
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
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
- Why does the State of the Aggregate Resource of Ontario Study (SAROS)
(Feb-2010) neglect to take
- 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
- 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
- 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
$0.035
$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
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
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
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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