A bid by James Dick Construction Ltd. to proceed with its plans for the Rockfort Quarry has been denied by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).
On Nov. 12 OMB vice chair Susan Campbell dismissed appeals from James Dick Construction regarding the Town of Caledon and Region of Peel’s refusal to grant zoning bylaw and official plan amendments to allow the company to proceed with the quarry on land at the corner of Olde Baseline Road and Winston Churchill Boulevard.
“The interest in protecting the natural heritage and cultural heritage resources of the subject lands and those surrounding them outweighs the interest in making the aggregate resource on the subject property available to supply mineral aggregate needs,” Campbell said in her decision.
James Dick Construction had proposed rezoning 220 acres and planned to mine about 145 acres of the site, located directly northeast of the Erin-Caledon border.
The company was also seeking a plan, as well as a licence to extract below the water table.
But opponents of the plan, including the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, repeatedly expressed concern about the effect that extraction could have on over 20 provincially significant wetlands and sensitive environmental features located nearby.
Campbell was inclined to agree.
“Too much of enormous value to the province, the region and the town could be lost if the proposed quarry went forward,” she said. “A failure in the mitigation measures proposed for the quarry … would have a catastrophic impact on the natural environment or the natural features and functions of the area.”
Campbell also stated “the fundamental change to the character of the area … would not be acceptable. The loss of views of rural lands, the loss of a cultural heritage landscape and cultural heritage resources and the conversion of a rural area into an urban area centred on a heavy industrial operation cannot be permitted in the interest of the production of more aggregate for infrastructure development.”
Campbell ordered that the Minister of Natural Resources “is to refuse to issue a licence under the Aggregate Resources Act … for the removal of aggregate from the subject property.”
She even went one step further to say, “It is time for alternatives to aggregate for infrastructure construction to be found.
“Too much of what is essential to the character of this province would be lost if aggregate extraction were to be permitted on lands like the subject property.
“Lands situated in a significant cultural landscape, surrounded by significant natural heritage features and functions, are not lands on which extraction should be permitted in the absence of demonstration of no negative impacts. No such demonstration has been completed in this case.”
Last February, after a delegation from the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Erin council unanimously passed a resolution stating the town was opposed to the Rockfort quarry proposal. Several weeks later Caledon and Peel officials defeated James Dick Construction’s applications.
