Guelph-Eramosa Township should not approve the “hidden quarry” rezoning because of “errors and deficiencies” in its application, say Concerned Residents Coalition (CRC) members.
The CRC’s latest report to Guelph-Eramosa council looked at the hydrogeology of the proposed quarry site and other “inconsistencies” with the James Dick Construction Ltd. (JDCL) application through an interpretation of the data presented by the company.
CRC member Stephanie De Grandis told the Advertiser that her May 19 presentation centred around a hydrological review completed by Garry Hunter and Associates on behalf of the CRC.
“We have a hydrogeologist on our board but it’s a volunteer board and we wanted to hire a professional hydrogeologist that could spend a lot of time looking at this application and the hydrogeological report,” she explained.
De Grandis said it’s important to have an accurate hydrological report because it will indicate how the quarry operation may impact the water system in the area.
“The site plans are important if you’re looking at hydrogeology because you have to know which way the blasting direction is and the action direction and how deep the extraction is with respect to going down to get the bedrock because the bedrock is going to hold the water,” she explained.
“It’s very important to understand where the recharge areas are, how the ground water is affected, because quarry applications do affect water levels and they also have been known to affect water quality.”
JDCL has been working to open a quarry on the north side of Highway 7 at the 6th Line since March 2013.
One of the alleged deficiencies Hunter discovered in the application, De Grandis said, was insufficient data to predict the bedrock contours in the area where JDCL is proposing to mine the bedrock. She said that only about 50% of the data was present for the site when the values listed were mapped out on the site.
“When you’re talking about impact on a stream or impact on a wetland or impact on the stream below the site, if you don’t have any data, you can’t really predict anything,” she said. “You can’t predict what’s going to happen with respect to the water levels in that area … you can’t predict bedrock contours, you can’t predict drawdown levels, how much the ground water would be lowered with respect to the operations, you can’t predict what’s going to happen to your wetlands because there’s no real data.”
Without complete data, De Grandis said the impact on nearby Brydson Creek and surrounding wetlands can’t be predicted and the drop in water level could be more than the predicted two metres and be “quite significant.” She also said JDCL may have mixed data from wet and dry seasons when determining water levels.
Another issue presented in terms of the hydrological information was JDCL’s suggestion that de-watering the pit wouldn’t be necessary. De-watering is required when it’s impossible to mine the stone of an active pit because it’s below the water level and the space keeps flooding.
“If you look again at the data it shows that the water levels could be two to five metres above the site that they’re actually going to start excavation in, so they do need to de-water,” she said. “They need to bring the water table down to actually even start phase one.”
De Grandis said JDCL has yet to address this question and the company says the water will diffuse away from the hole.
Another issue Hunter identified was water quality.
“They talk about the data that they’ve obtained from what they call a snapshot look at the water quality with respect to that area, but they only did it in the 500m perimeter so it missed a lot of the wells because of the small … size,” said De Grandis, adding a “snapshot” test is not acceptable when discussing water quality.
“You have to do repeated testing, you have to do it accurately, you have to do it several times and you just can’t do things in snapshot fashion for water quality,” she said.
To clarify the findings De Grandis said the CRC suggests testing a 1,000m perimeter – double what is currently being tested.
Another alleged deficiency Hunter identified in the hydrological rationale of JDCL is the company’s assertion that any contamination of the ground water would “be diluted away,” De Grandis said. However, JDCL used the example of the Dolmine pit, which she said has 10 times the flow rate of the hidden quarry.
“Your contaminants aren’t going to be diluted at the same level if your dilution factor is 10 times bigger,” she explained.
Another alleged inconsistency Hunter identified in the application is that the noise report says the excavation will be going in one direction but the blasting report says the excavation will go in a different direction.
“These site plans are regulatory tools so if this quarry is approved these site plans are kind of the Bible that is used to actually monitor this excavation so if they’re incorrect this is a huge problem for the community because you need the site plans correct because that’s what you’re working off of when you’re monitoring the site for any discrepancies,” she explained. “So the site plans have to be absolutely correct.”
De Grandis said her recommendation to council was to not approve the rezoning.
However, it appears the matter may be out of the township’s hands, as JDCL official Greg Sweetnam announced last week the company has referred the application to the OMB.
