In the middle of Canadian Environment Week, the city’s branch of the Council of Canadians presented Growth, Gravel and Groundwater to an audience of about 100 at Harcourt Memorial United Church on June 3.
The panel consisted of Rick Holt, of GravelWatchOntario, John Jackson, of the Grand River Environmental Network, and Rob Uffen, of the North Dufferin Agriculture and Community Taskforce.
Holt announced another pit proposed in his area, plus another five coming to Woolwich Township. He said he had read about trucks “taking down the [Niagara] escarpment. They use the gravel to build roads and then they help wreck the roads.”
He said the gravel industry is “very powerful, and very hard to stop. The gravel industry extracts 170 million tons of gravel every year in Ontario, and five per cent of all man made carbon dioxide comes from the making of cement.
Holt showed slides of the Big Lake project in Puslinch, and noted Highway 401 runs right through that project. He said the water there used to be underground and was protected, but a spill now of any type of chemical on Highway 401 near there would go right into the water supply.
“Do we need gravel? Yes, but how much?” he asked, adding, “How do we live with this mess?”
But, he said, gravel owners are getting scared because of all of the new legislation, such as the Green Belt, acts to protect the Oak Ridges Morraine and the Niagara Escarpment and the Clean Water Act.
“We are getting greener,” he said. “It’s going to be tougher to get a pit.”
He noted there have been some constructive steps and people such as himself and his organization are now “sitting down with the industry.” He said he is working with the Ministry of Natural Resources, and “trying to figure out … how to decrease the amount [of gravel] we use.”
He cited two recent victories over pit owners, in Puslinch with the Cranberry Area Ratepayers Association and one big pit in Flamborough.
During the question period, the University of Guelph took flak because it owns a 300-acre pit in Guelph that some people allege has caused problems with Mill Creek, and because experts say it should have been shut down years ago. The speaker noted the university teaches environmental science and then causes environmental problems, which is “wrong.”
As for Puslinch’s Big Lake, one audience member said the gravel industry is expecting Canadian taxpayers to pay the costs for rehabilitating old pits.
But Holt noted that some pits have suffered setbacks, and “The industry has been put on notice it’s not a free game any more. U of G will be embarrassed if you keep at them,” he said.
Big pipe project
John Jackson of the Grand River Environment Network talked about the idea for a water pipeline from Lake Erie to the Region of Waterloo.
The 100km pipeline would cost $1.2-billion, so the region is hoping to get others involved in between for their own water supply. But, Jackson said, Lake Erie is a poor candidate for such a scheme. It is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, it has pollution problems, algae blooms, red, blue, and green algae that is a microtoxin, plus all kinds of invasive species such as zebra mussels. Those species, he said, are bringing to the water some long-buried PCBs. He also mentioned botulism and neuro toxins that may cause health problems.
Jackson said it will take 40 years to build the pipeline, and by then the lake could be in even worse condition.
He said there are better ways to ensure a good water supply, and one is conservation. He noted that Guelph and the Region of Waterloo are already doing a better job of conservation than most of the province.
He said it is time to build homes with cisterns, and to use better technology to conserve water.
And, he said, “We act as if everything has to be drinking water quality. It’s an incredible waste of money.”
He said homes should be built with tanks that allow shower water to be collected for flushing toilets, and filtered rain water in cisterns could be used for washing clothes.
During the question period, one audience member noted Guelph has taken its participation in the big pipe “off the table.”
The speaker asked what citizens can do to conserve water.
Jackson many water conservation ideas can no longer remain voluntary, and government is going to have to enforce many of them by laws.
He said there is technology to allow different water uses safely.
He noted other places are already doing some of the things he had mentioned, and he said Canadians “consume three times the water of other countries.”
Big pits and more
Rob Uffen, of the North Dufferin Agriculture and Community Taskforce, said his area is under major threat.
The jazz musician said most of his work is in activism and telling people who is behind some of the major proposals there. One company came to Melancthon and Mono Townships ostensibly to buy farms for potatoes, and it now plans to turn it into an 8,500 acre pit.
He said it has reached the point where governments are subordinate to multi-nationals, and he expects the pit, at the head of the watershed, could easily create water problems in the future.
Uffen said there are other major problems in Dufferin County, including Orica planning an explosives storage area near Grand Valley, wind turbines everywhere, and Shelburne now considering a plastics operation in that community. Melancthon also has the largest wind turbine project in Canada. He said the shift is from agriculture to a huge industrial base.
Uffen outlined the lobby groups, their ties to such people as Premier Dalton McGuinty’s former staff, and “all sorts of initiatives being taken in Melancthon.” One of the people he named was in the audience and said there were no secret plots, and he was there to hear people’s opinions.
Uffen replied, to applause, “I do not condone one portion of the scheme you represent.”
A former Eramosa resident asked what a farmer can do when he wants to retire and someone offers a huge amount of month.
Uffen said farmers can answer that, but he noted in his area, companies had used “strong-arm tactics on small farmers.”
There were several more questions to end the meeting. One person who claimed to be under the $5-million law suit by the City of Guelph and Belmont Equity Holdings Ltd. for occupying the Hanlon Creek Business Park lands last year, asked why the group didn’t recommend more “physical” action to stop projects.
Most of the panel argued photo opportunities for Newspapers and television are more likely to generate good publicity than physical methods of protests, such as blockades.
Holt said, “We have to follow the rules” and said good behaviour will achieve much more than lawbreaking.
He said every time there is a Newspaper article, it gets clipped and save, and when the pile gets big enough to fall over, government will start to react.
