Saturday January 22: Meeting in Honeywood to stop giant quarry

NDACT appeals to public in quarry fight
Ontario Farmland Preservation founder Bernard Pope to speak
By WES KELLER Orangeville Citizen January 20 2011
Saying demolition of farm homes by The Highland Companies will cost Melancthon taxpayers an assessment loss of almost $7 million, North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce (NDACT) is appealing to the public to help it block a proposed quarry that it says would imperil the water table and destroy precious food-crop land.
The houses at issue are the former homes of farmers who sold properties comprising about 7,500 acres of mostly potato acreage to Highland. These, along with the outbuildings, became surplus to farming operations as Highland continued and expanded the potato business.
But NDACT is even more concerned about the perceived impacts of a quarry that could eventually span 2,400 acres and possibly excavate to a depth of 200 feet below the water table.
Highland spokesman Michael Daniher recently confirmed that his company’s forthcoming application will be for a licence to extract aggregates on 2,400 acres. Highland has said this would be done on 300-acre increments, and the increments would be progressively rehabilitated to farmland.
In its opposition, NDACT has engaged consulting engineer Garry Hunter as well as planning consultant Margaret Walton and municipal lawyer Ted Oldfield. It has been asking Melancthon Council to enact a demolition bylaw and create a special crop designation for, generally, a large area centred on Honeywood.
“Not only are ratepayers going to be paying for (the loss of assessment), but the repercussions of this mine could seriously and adversely affect the water, the landscape, the community, surrounding agriculture land use, and with the potential to cause disastrous environmental scenarios for decades,” NDACT says on its website.
“The effect on deer, wild turkeys, migratory birds and other native wildlife will be irreversible. This open pit mine will take some of the best agriculture land in Ontario out of production and is in a location that is recognized as one of the primary sources for water recharge feeding the Nottawasaga and Grand rivers. The repercussion of tampering with this water could affect over a million people that are downstream from and served by these watercourses.”
NDACT is holding a public information meeting at Honeywood Arena this Saturday (January 22), from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.
It will discuss its application for about 10,000 acres of the township to be designated as “locally significant specialty crop area,” as well as the potential impacts of a mining operation, how a citizen coalition successfully fought against a quarry in Caledon, among other things.
Speakers are to include Ms. Walton, Penny Richardson of Caledon Citizen’s Coalition and Ontario Farmland Preservation founder Bernard Pope, among others.
Toronto Star article, December 3 2009