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Valley Voices thanks Walter Leudtke and his Township Newsletter for the following.
"The Township is reprinting the following article by Mark Niblett in the Stirling Community Press in the hope that things go better in A/H."
"Mind your P's and Q's
There's an old adage to the effect that your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. You can see this principle at work in land use planning in most municipalities. There are volumes of laws and rules and regulations to set out what you can do with your land. If you want to build a factory in a residential area, forget it; the effects of your operation would simply be too disruptive to adjacent landowners. Still, there is one consideration that outweighs all the checks and balances; one industry that invariably gets permission to operate as it wants without regard to the surrounding area; one commercial activity actively promoted and protected by an entire division of the provincial government; one development that takes absolute precedence over all other human activity. I'm referring, of course, to (gravel) pits and (stone) quarries. If you think I'm exaggerating the influence of this industry, take a close look at the recent announcement of a huge greenbelt for Ontario: the sole activity that will continue to be permitted in all areas is extraction from P's and Q's. One of the early parts of the script has a company showing up at a council meeting to say it's seeking to establish a pit or quarry. Its way has been greatly smoothed in advance by some mapping done many years ago by the province, identifying "significant" deposits of what they call "aggregate resources." They said that P's & Q's must always be permitted in these areas, and browbeat municipal councils into putting a special designation in their Official Plans to that effect. Officially, P&Q is said to be an "interim" land use, the implication being that they'll just clean up all this messy gravel and be on their way in a couple of years. The term means nothing: I can show you pits that have been running for 40 years, and farms that vanished after 30, but logic doesn't have anything to do with this. The developer will include in his dog-and-pony show references to the overwhelming importance of gravel and stone in building roads and houses; he will claim it will provide extra tax revenue and new jobs, plus a per-ton baksheesh for the township; that all activities will be closely monitored by the Ministry of Natural Resources. There will be (unenforceable) promises to clean up when the P & Q is exhausted, creating a new Garden of Eden. Please note that the P&Q guys just make assertions, providing no factual evidence to back them up.
I live near a pit, and I can tell the residents in that area some things they can expect when this operation is licensed. First, these guys use heavy equipment all the time, and heavy equipment is not quiet. Diesel engines and the backup beepers make noise that carries for miles. The operator will build big mounds of dirt called berms, that are supposed to limit the noise, but they don't; they just conceal the rape of the land. In addition, your local roads will have a huge increase in truck traffic, which means they will wear out about five times faster than expected. (Those are standard figures that any civil engineer can verify.) If you think the municipal taxes are going to cover that damage, I've got a bridge to sell you. Oh, and there's a special round file for your complaints.
As far as regulation goes, it's a joke. The Ministry of Natural Resources’ P&Q branch isn’t in place to regulate—their goal is to open as many P's & Q's as possible, expanding their bureaucratic empire. They don't give a damn about the public—they're in place (paid with your tax dollars) as defenders and apologists for the industry. I mean, come on: what kind of regulatory body is proud of the fact that, in 40-some years, they have never refused a licence or cancelled a licence? These aren't regulators, these are pimps. Okay, I'm bitter. I went through the whole thing, with both the municipality and the ministry fighting me and my neighbours all the way. We were treated with open contempt, accused of sinister motives, ridiculed for demanding proof of the claims. We lost, and only later did we realize that we were playing with a deck stacked against us. For many years now we've put up with the noise, the dust, the hazards of sharing our (crumbling) roads with unskilled drivers in 15-ton trucks. I wish I could offer you some hope, some formula for defending yourselves and your environment. But the P & Q guys are connected up the wazoo, and they've got (to borrow Stalin's phrase) all the machine-guns. I hope you'll stand and fight, but I couldn't blame those who sell their houses as soon as they can, before the pit opens and the property value tanks.
Run, before it's too late. Resistance is futile."
