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The Quandary with Quarries

June 9, 2022   ·   1 Comments

By Martina Rowley

If you are—like me—a lover and frequent user of our local Island Lake Conservation Area and its pleasant eight-kilometre trail around the lake, you too will have noticed that dusty, visual abomination of a quarry (or more specifically a pit) at its north end. Newly expanded in the past couple of years, it seems, it now looks wider, deeper and had recently been dug damagingly close to the wire fence, barely keeping the big diggers out of the abutting conservation area. Recently, the trail had begun subsiding from over-eager digging. At one point, orange plastic cones were placed on the side of the trail, where the edge had started crumbling; not my idea of an ‘escape to nature’. Do open pit operators not understand the meaning of “conservation area”?

My first question would be to the Credit Valley Conservation Area organisation: What is being done to prevent further encroachment and disruption of a protected and coveted local nature area by the pit owners? My second question would go to the Town of Mono, in whose jurisdiction the quarry sits. Basically, what gives? Can quarry operators just dig this close to, and basically scrape off the very edge of a conservation area? I suppose I should then have a third question, which should go to the quarry operator but let’s not print that here…

The bigger question is the quandary of quarries and open pits in general, of which there are—sadly — many in our beautiful County of Dufferin. According to an interactive map by the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry, the quarry I mentioned is called Walker Farm/Craig Pit, owned by Brock Aggregates Inc. and is located off Hurontario Road. It is listed as an active pit with a maximum annual extraction allowance of 500,000 tonnes of sand from its 62.5-hectare area.

In Ontario, there are around 5,000 open pits and quarries and on rough count over 80 in the area between Brampton, Guelph, Fergus, Shelburne and Palgrave. Their location is a catch-22 situation: They are located close to urban areas because that is where the highest demand for construction materials is. This minimises the need for long distance transportation, but it also means they will always be located close to urban and other populated areas.

That, of course, is less fun for nature-lovers and local residents having to deal with the impact from heavy trucks. Plus, quarries are obviously only set up where there is something valuable to be extracted. Since Dufferin County and surrounding regions sit atop the Oak Ridges Moraine, formed 12,000 years ago by advancing and retreating glaciers, there are vast sand and gravel deposits.

The environmental issues of aggregate extraction are significant. The entire layer of natural vegetation, topsoil and subsoil is removed, leading to a loss of animal wildlife and a significant loss of biodiversity in plants and aquatic habitats. Adjacent eco-systems are affected by noise, dust, pollution and contaminated water. Pits and quarries also disrupt the existing movement of surface water and groundwater, affect the natural water recharge and can lead to reduced quantity and quality of drinking water near or downstream from a quarry site. After a quarry or pit has served its purpose, very few are properly rehabilitated. According to the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), less than half of the land disturbed for aggregate production between 1992 and 2001 has been rehabilitated.

Then there is the heavy truck traffic required to transport the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of aggregate every year, causing local traffic congestion, accidents, noise, dust, air pollution, and wear and tear of local roads. Residents in Caledon and anywhere near Highway 10, or similar main transport roads, can attest to the nightmare of the thousands of truck trips it takes to move these construction materials to their next stop for processing and distribution.

Back in 2010, Caledon residents won their 13-year battle against plans for a new and controversial quarry that was proposed near Winston Churchill Boulevard and Olde Baseline Road. While it was a victory for local residents, it was a heavy hit for the region’s aggregate industry. Many citizen groups have been vocal in their opposition to quarries. The Concerned Citizens Coalition in Rockwood have been fighting the Hidden Quarry, ACTION Milton took on the Campbellville quarry, and CORE in Burlington is or was dealing with a limestone quarry expansion on their local Mount Nemo. And here in Dufferin County, the Food and Water First campaign in Dufferin County fought to stop the infamous “Mega Quarry” that was proposed to chew up 2,300 acres of farmland to extract limestone.

Although I do not know anyone who would like an open pit or quarry near their hometown or rural residence, our ‘not in my backyard’ fights seem to be more about their geographic location than the need for their existence. After all, and I hate to state the obvious, but it is our collective demand and our first-world habits of consumption that require more and more stone, sand and gravel for building roads, bridges and homes in the first place!

This society’s insatiable appetite for monster homes, multiple home ownerships, and single person dwellings feed the constantly growing demand for building materials that rely on those very same aggregates that we say we don’t want anyone to dig up or transport on our roads (why these do not get shipped by rail still boggles my mind and is quite another story). Add to that this country’s personal needs to own two or even three vehicles per household and the Canadian obsession with heavy personal vehicles, such as SUVs and pickup trucks, plus the large number of single-occupant trips taken for routine and commuter trips, plus a growing population, and you can see how quickly that degrades existing road surfaces and requires constant repairs, as well as the need for construction of new roads and bridges. And all of this requires sand, gravel and other aggregates. Pointing the finger at quarry operators hardly helps then, does it…

What to do? A report I came across states that urban designers and developers can apply approaches that reduce the need for virgin aggregate. Provincial government then could and should play a role in promoting or even mandating, where possible, the use of recycled aggregate, as long as the safety or durability of infrastructure is not compromised. There could be a steep landfill tax to reduce unnecessary landfilling of materials that are still usable. And pits and quarries at the end of their usable time should be required to rehabilitate and replant the quarries (and heavily fined for non-compliance), so these vast, unattractive swaths of bruised land can become viable and beautiful ecosystems once again.  

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