Town of Erin officials say accepting a Hydro One donation of about 120,000 tonnes of gravel has been a good News story worth recognizing, but at least one town resident isn’t completely convinced.
The last of the material will be removed in the next few weeks from the temporary storage site at Barbour Field and applied to a number of Erin roads.
“It virtually will have [been used on] every road in the town,” said Erin roads superintendent Larry Van Wyck, referring to annual maintenance gravel work completed by the municipality.
In addition, a large amount of the material was used for projects on two sections of the Erin/Halton Townline, a section of 1st Line south of Wellington Road 50, and for a reconstruction project on Sideroad 17.
Van Wyck estimates the gravel recycling initiative has saved the town about $750,000 and resulted in “a better finished product” on town roads.
Yet neighbour Vanessa Gartner is not happy about the situation at Barbour Field, including the noise, truck traffic and potential safety issues, considering the gravel pile is located near a children’s playground within a public park.
She said there was no fencing installed in the area, but Van Wyck said fencing and signs were installed recently at the park.
“I’m glad the gravel was donated and it’s good for the town,” said Gartner, who added she is a licenced environmental technician.
“But the town can’t do whatever it wants just because it is the town.”
Gartner, who lives on the 8th Line, suggested the municipality was somehow skirting provincial regulations that private companies wanting to run a similar operation would have to face.
However, officials with two provincial ministries say there are no such regulations for the temporary Barbour Field storage operation.
“The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry does not have any role concerning a stockpile of gravel on a site that is not licensed under the Aggregate Resources Act,” stated ministry press secretary Todd Lane.
Kate Jordan of the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change said her ministry did receive one complaint about the Barbour Field operation but it was more about “aesthetics.”
Jordan noted there are no specific noise limits for municipal projects, adding “when it is a municipality doing the work on their own property, it’s usually governed by local bylaws.”
Van Wyck stated all the work has been, and will be, completed in compliance with the town’s noise bylaw.
“This is not a pit, this is a one-time recycling operation,” he stressed.
He said six to eight trucks were expected to begin removal of the gravel pile on June 9 and work throughout weekdays over the next two to three weeks.
Last month town council approved a tender from Cox Construction Limited for $109,480 to supply the loader and trucks to haul and apply the gravel from the Barbour Field site.
Background
In the summer of 2012 Hydro One completed its 500-kilovolt transmission line from the Bruce Power complex in Kincardine to a switching station in Milton.
As a condition of project approval, Hydro One offered the gravel used to construct temporary access roads for the project to municipalities through which the line passed, including Erin.
The town decided to accept the gravel and that year three sections of road were reconstructed using the material as a road base.
The remainder of the material, which was placed in a large pile at Barbour Field, was subsequently screened and used in 2013 and 2014 for use as maintenance gravel and for repairing soft spots on town roads.
This spring the material was again screened and then mixed with sand to meet town requirements.
The resulting pile of material, about 30,000 tonnes, sat at Barbour Field until this week, when final removal and application of the material was expected to begin.
