Guelph-Eramosa Township is giving the Concerned Residents Coalition (CRC) $70,000 to fight a proposed quarry near Rockwood at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing this fall.
However, council also decided the township itself is not going to be a party at the OMB hearing.
Instead, the municipality is sending its lawyer to file an exhibit at the hearing – in the form of a resolution stating the township’s objection to the quarry and asking the OMB to reject James Dick Construction Ltd.’s (JDCL) rezoning application and Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) license application.
“I think one of the obvious questions people are going to ask is ‘if the township’s opposed to the hidden quarry why aren’t they going to fight it at the hearing?’” councillor Mark Bouwmeester said at a special meeting on June 27.
“In order to be at the hearing we would be required to provide evidence that would argue against what our peer review team, which is a group of respected professionals that work for us, has just said is okay.”
Bouwmeester explained that would mean firing the township’s consultants and finding contrary evidence to support council’s decision.
“Firing consultants until you find one that agrees with you would be inappropriate and irresponsible,” he said. “As well the applicant has already formally advised us the last time they were here at council that they would likely call our own peer review team as witnesses at the hearing to argue against the municipality.
“Even if we did find new consultants and tried to find new expert witnesses it would cost the township several hundreds of thousands of dollars before the hearing even took place.”
The decision on the zoning bylaw amendment was taken out of the municipality’s hands when JDCL filed an appeal to the OMB in June 2015.
The quarry process began in December of 2012 when JDCL applied for a rezoning amendment for lands southeast of Rockwood – from agriculture and hazard land to extractive industrial – to make way for a quarry.
In October council made a unanimous decision to advise the OMB that it opposed the hidden quarry application as it stood at the time, despite a report from township planning consultant Elizabeth Howson of Macaulay Shiomi Howson Ltd. recommending council advise the OMB to approve the quarry application in-principle, subject to specific conditions being met.
At the June 27 special meeting, council came out of a closed session with a resolution restating its objection to the quarry but also including caveats suggesting what should be done if the quarry is approved, including:
– approval of the township’s zoning bylaw amendment as drafted by the township solicitor and consultants;
– approval of the township’s conditions of development; and
– a request that the final order on the appeal and referral not be issued until a satisfactory road agreement is entered between JDCL and the township and a permit from the Ministry of Transportation for the truck traffic is received.
However, not all councillors were in agreement.
Councilor Corey Woods moved to amend the resolution to remove the information about opposing the quarry.
“In the fall of 2015 this council passed the resolution stating that the hidden quarry cannot proceed until they met all of the township’s conditions,” he said.
“To put that in plain English whether we say ‘no unless you conform to these conditions’ or ‘yes but you have to do these conditions’ we are saying the same thing – ‘If you satisfy all of these conditions you can proceed with your application.’”
Woods explained the township had 65 issues with the proposed quarry, which included hundreds of conditions.
“James Dick Construction has met all of those conditions,” he said. “Therefore I believe that the township should remove their objection to the hidden quarry and remove themselves from the OMB proceedings.”
Woods said he didn’t think it is fair to JDCL for the township to oppose the application when the company had fulfilled all the expectations.
“I’m stuck on the process,” Woods said. “When we say to somebody here’s what we expect of you and they do it, I just think you may not like an aggregate business but if we did this to any other business I mean we would just be terrible people, I think.”
Bouwmeester said he’s reserving his right as an elected official to say, “I still think this is bad for the community.”
In a recorded vote the amendment failed, with Woods and councillor David Wolk voting to accept the amendment, while Mayor Chris White, Bouwmeester and councillor Louise Marshall voted against the amendment.
Marshall said she thought the quarry application still proposed too much risk.
“With all those conditions that we put in place and they’ve met the conditions, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything’s going to (be) hunky-dory,” she said. “There could be wells going dry, basements flooded.”
Bouwmeester agreed the risk was just too great.
“Notwithstanding our consultant’s recommendations and after evaluating all of the reports and all of the submissions to date, I’ve come to the conclusion that while our consultants view this proposal as acceptable from a technical perspective, I do not believe that it’s desirable from a community perspective,” he said.
“After you ask yourself these three questions; who pays for this, who gets the reward and who takes on the risk, I can only conclude that there are no rewards for the community but that the community will most certainly assume all of the risk.”
White said his understanding of risk is that it’s balanced by potential benefit, however in the quarry’s case he sees most of the benefits going to the province and not to the local community.
“When I look at the benefit to the community I don’t see the jobs, all I see is potential risk,” he said.
“That’s not to say that the peer reviewers haven’t done their job and those standards haven’t been met, but for me some of those standards aren’t high enough.
“I think that because it’s our folks and our community and all those people have concerns about their quality of living and their home and their future and their children … I can’t accept this level of risk.”
In another recorded vote the original resolution passed 3-2, with White, Marshall and Bouwmeester voting in favour.
Council directed the township solicitor to attend the OMB hearing beginning Sept. 27 to provide the resolution and associated documents to be filed as an exhibit.
At the same special meeting, council voted unanimously to give the CRC $70,000 from the Rockwood Hydro Fund, which has a current balance of $1.3 million, with the idea that it would help to pay for two of the group’s four expert witnesses as they participate as a party in the OMB hearings.
“I think it’s absolutely critical the community have a voice at the OMB,” Mayor Chris White said.
“I think we’ve heard enough in the last three and a half years from the folks, they want to be there and I think we have an obligation to help them get there. This amount of money, it helps.”
In a phone interview with the Advertiser on June 28 White echoed Bouwmeester and said it would be irresponsible for the township to fire its consulting team, but he still doesn’t agree with its recommendations.
“Part of the reason we’re supporting the CRC is they may have a different perspective on this,” White said in the interview. “It ensures that the community most directly affected by this has a voice at the hearing.”
Instead of using money from general taxation to fulfill the CRC request for funding, council chose to take it from the Rockwood Hydro Fund.
“That’s what this money is for,” White said. “This money is intended for the benefit of the people in Rockwood and it seems to me the impact is greatest there.”
Though the hydro fund was originally set up with the intention to improve Rockwood, White said using it to donate to the CRC is a way to “protect the community.”
“I think it would be an improvement for the community if the quarry went away because it’s kind of like a threat,” he said. “So having that in the room you know may be a future threat and nobody can be sure this is the last quarry.”
The OMB hearing starts on Sept. 27 at 10:30am at the Guelph-Eramosa office.
