Conveyor tunnel to link James Dick pits in Erin, Caledon

GUELPH – There’s roughly 700 acres of aggregate divided by a road straddling two towns.

How do you get material from one side of the other without crossing the road? You go under – through a tunnel, with a conveyer belt – it turns out.

Bolton-based James Dick Construction wants to move aggregate from a Caledon pit to one in Erin, directly across Winston Churchill Boulevard, with a 260-foot tunnel/belt system.

“We’re starting to dig a hole for where the plant is going to go on the Caledon side of the road,” James Dick vice president Greg Sweetnam told the Advertiser by phone.

Aggregate will move on a belt under Winston Churchill for processing on the Erin side until the hole is deep enough on the Caledon side.

That’s likely to take around four years, Sweetnam said.

The company has a permit from the province to extract 1.8 million tonnes of aggregate combined from both sites.

In 2021, the Ontario Land Tribunal directed the province to issue the permit after a hearing on objections to the Caledon pit, which is essentially an expansion of the existing Erin pit.

When the hole is deep enough in Caledon, the plant on the Erin side will be torn down, according to Sweetnam, and remaining material beneath moved to the Caledon side for processing.

At that point, the Erin pit will have reached its lifetime extraction.

“The cheapest way to move material from point A to point B is by conveyor, and the least impactful way to move material … is by conveyor; so you generate less dust, less noise, you burn less energy,” Sweetnam said.

It also helps that James Dick Construction owns Scarborough-based Assinck, a manufacturer of conveyors for the aggregate industry.

To construct the tunnel, a trench will be dug below Winston Churchill. Modular, precast concrete blocks will form a rectangular culvert, or tunnel. A concrete lid or cap is poured. The trench is filled back in with soil or gravel, and the road is repaved.

The tunnel would be similar to one the company already has in Caledon.
It runs just beyond a kilometre from Kennedy Road to the company’s largest operation, on Highway 10.

The tunnel is a permanent, engineered structure that could remain in perpetuity, Sweetnam said.

Should local government want it gone after the pits are emptied, however, James Dick Construction will need to remove it at its expense.

“Now we’re just going through the engineering details and getting the easements registered so that we can actually build it,” Sweetnam said.

The company could install it later this year once permissions are granted.

Wellington County council deferred a vote late last month on a bylaw to grant permission after county councillor and Puslinch Mayor James Seeley advanced a motion to wait until county staff could follow up on his concerns.

Seeley told the Advertiser he wants assurances about what’s next for the Erin pit, and wants to ensure silt hasn’t built up in the pit lakes to the point where rain and surface water cannot replenish aquifers below, affecting groundwater flows.

Seeley said the county should receive a financial benefit from James Dick Construction using the county’s right-of-way. He also asked staff to ensure only material from the Caledon pit is being sent under the road for processing in Erin.