Guelph-Eramosa is faced with another potential gravel pit in the township.
At the Feb. 1 council meeting, township consultant Dan Currie of MHBC Planning, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, presented a planning report that provided an overview of the application process for the proposed pit.
He also recommended that council set a date for a public meeting where the full planning report will be presented.
The proposed Tri City Lands Ltd. pit, also known as the Spencer Pit, will be located in the southwest corner of the township, south of Wellington Road 124 and north of the existing rail tracks. The vehicle entrance will be off of Wellington Road 124, directly opposite Kossuth Road.
The proposal is for 51 acres of land zoned agricultural and primarily used for that purpose. The rezoning amendment application requests that it be rezoned to extractive industrial allowing for an above-the-water-table pit with an extraction rate of up to 650,000 tonnes of aggregate annually.
“No extraction will occur within 1.5 metres of the established ground water table,” the report states.
“The lands are designated prime agriculture and they’re also designated mineral aggregate resource and in the area identified in the Wellington County plan. Aggregate extraction is a permitted use in this area, so no official plan amendment is required but a zoning bylaw amendment is,” Currie explained.
The company originally applied for the zoning bylaw amendment in March 2014 and at the same time filed an application with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) for an Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) licence for a new pit.
The township deemed the rezoning application complete in April 2014 and after the application was circulated to commenting agencies it was in need of revision.
The MNRF deemed the ARA application complete in May 2014 and held a public consultation session in June of the same year – about 30 people attended.
Both Guelph-Eramosa Township and Wellington County filed objections to the approval of the ARA application in June because the municipality had not yet approved the necessary rezoning permits to allow for aggregate extraction.
The township received a revised rezoning amendment application in January, which addressed all the concerns raised in 2014.
The next step is a public meeting to present the planning report – a process council wants to ensure it gets right in light of its past experience with a Rockwood quarry proposed by James Dick Construction Ltd., which has an Ontario Municipal Board pre-hearing date scheduled for March 1 and a hearing date scheduled for Sept. 27.
“We bent over backwards with the Rockwood quarry to ensure that at no point the process (would) be an issue,” Mayor Chris White said. “What I’m trying to say is, this is a speculation, absolutely, but if 10,000 people wanted to show up at that meeting, I wouldn’t want to have a scenario where we’re booking them into a hall with four seats because sometimes that can lead people to assume, ‘Oh geez the hall’s too small, you don’t want us to speak’ and all that kind of stuff.”
In order to mitigate that concern, council will hold the public meeting during the March 7 council meeting, which will be held at the Marden Community Centre.
“I like the idea of having it at Marden simply because it brings it a little closer to the community that’s going to be impacted,” councillor David Wolk said.
However, not all councillors are concerned the turnout will necessitate a change of venue.
“I think (with) the one in Rockwood people were blindsided where it was almost like they didn’t know there was gravel there,” councillor Corey Woods said. “If you don’t know there’s gravel down on 124 you’ve had … your head in the ground for a long time.
“So I don’t know if we’re going to attract the same crowd because there’s a bunch of gravel pits down there.”
Currie said that after the public meeting MHBC will take all the comments into consideration and prepare a recommendation for council which will likely be brought to a meeting in April.
For more information about the Spencer Pit visit http://www.get.on.ca/tricity.
