For many years politicians, urban planners, professors even journalists have condemned urban sprawl. They say the popular model of paving over the landscape indiscriminately into suburban pockets of housing is just not sustainable. This view is widespread among many groups and organizations and yet we continue to allow the ongoing, systematic destruction of valuable land. In places like the GTA (greater Toronto area), urban sprawl is out of control. Municipal leaders who lack vision continue to be bought by land developers. They are convinced that the predicted population growth in southern Ontario needs to be met with more of the same suburbs we’ve condemned for years. These mayors and councilors have been bought into believing traditional development is the only way and if you don’t build it, they will simply go over to your neighbouring municipality, and they will. It’s time to put a halt to this madness. Municipalities have not recognized past failures and are not willing to change development towards more sustainable approaches. Because of this and how easy it is to buy politicians (by developers), we need to take the powers of appropriating land away from municipalities. We need a provincial plan that looks far into the future and ensures independent, sustainable communities.
It’s extremely concerning that Ontarians import some $4billion worth of food more then we export. Our dependence on other jurisdictions for our food supply has grown to an extremely dangerous level. In the event of a natural disaster, a pandemic, terrorist attack or a blackout (like the 2003 blackout) even the abrupt closing of the US boarder for whatever reason, the city of Toronto would have just 3 days of fresh food supply. We can’t simply ignore these facts; we have been confronted with these alarming stats for some time now but fail to respond.
One could argue that we have protection in place today with the creation of initiatives like the Green Belt protection plan. While the Green Belt does protect valuable farm land, wetlands, forests and watersheds, it says nothing about the massive shortfall of farmland needed to support our own needs let alone this valuable land now being swallowed up by urban sprawl. The point here is to use the land we do develop in a more sustainable manner and build our communities so that we do have access to local food, public transit and amenities.
To meet the needs of developers and their urban sprawl, the Ontario government is proposing to build the second largest quarry in North America. This open pit limestone quarry will be 1 by 3 kilometers in size and as deep as 200 feet below the water table – that’s the size of about 200 football fields as deep as Niagara Falls! Because it falls at the headwaters for 5 major rivers, the company bidding the proposal will have to pump 600 million liters of groundwater each day – the equivalent of a ¼ of what the entire city of Toronto consumes daily. If built the people of Ontario will be adding 300, 40 tonne trucks along HWY’s 124, 10 and 89 EVERY HOUR. This will inevitably cost us millions in highway upgrades and maintenance and create massive amounts of dust and pollution, which in turn will cost you and I in our health (and the expenses associated with health care) not to mention the unknowns as to water supplies to literally millions of Ontarians. All these issues arise and there has been no environmental assessment. The Minister of Natural Resources (MNR) can simply say yes or no without the valuable information garnered by an environmental assessment.
Do you want to do your part in helping to stop urban sprawl while protecting valuable land and a precious water supply? Here’s how…
Compliments of Rob Strang, Candidate, Dufferin Caledon, Deputy Leader – Green Party of Ontario
There are four days left to register a comment to MNR in opposition to the quarry via the Environment Registry. Please submit your comment under the Environmental Bill of Rights here before July 11.
You can also write John Wilkinson, Minister of the Environment, asking him to designate this project for a full Environmental Assessment. A sample letter is available here and may be sent to the address below.
Notes
The comment period on the mega quarry has been extended until July 11, 2011. To submit formal comments to the MNR’s posting on the Environmental Registry, please visit www.ebr.gov.on.ca and search under posting #011-2864. For information about the posting, please contact Mr. Craig Laing, Aggregate Resources Officer, Midhurst District, Ministry of Natural Resources, at 705-725-7532.
Request that the mega quarry be subject to a full environmental assessment by writing:
Hon. John Wilkinson, Minister
Ministry of Environment
11th Floor Ferguson Block
77 Wellesley St. West
Toronto, ON M7A 2T5
Jwilkinson.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
416-314-6790
There are various organizations working to fight against this project, including:
http://www.ndact.com/NDACT/Welcome.html
Citizens Alliance for a Sustainable Environment (CAUSE) www.citizensalliance.ca/
The Council of Canadians http://www.canadians.org/
Avaaz has also launched a petition which can be signed here,
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_quarry/?vl
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