Next Monday the Concerned Citizens Coalition will rally opponents of proposed Rockwood area quarry

Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party of Ontario, and a Guelphite, will be the guest speaker at a community meeting of the Concerned Residents Coalition (CRC), happening next Monday, Feb. 13, in Rockwood. All are welcome.

Since March, 2013, CRC has been fighting a proposal by James Dick Construction Limited to develop the Hidden Quarry just outside of Rockwood in Guelph-Eramosa Township, at Highway 7 and 6th Line Eramosa.

Monday’s meeting will give updates on next actions for CRC, and on where the quarry proposal is at. The meeting will happen at 7 p.m. at the Rockwood United Church, 19 Harris Street.

An Ontario Municipal Board hearing challenging the quarry got underway in late September of last year, only to be cancelled when information about a bylaw change surfaced, rendering the OMB challenge irrelevant.

The hearing was to have lasted five to seven weeks, but instead was adjourned after less than two days. What failed to surface before the hearing got underway was that the actual zoning bylaw under which James Dick Construction Ltd. filed its appeal to the OMB was no longer on the books.

The township had approved a new zoning bylaw that repealed the old one under which the James Dick appeal was filed. The adjournment was a stunner given the costly preparations and legal maneuvering that lead up to the hearing.

Monday’s meeting will include updates on CRC board actions in the months since the OMB adjournment, and information on new rezoning applications by James Dick Construction to both Guelph Eramosa Township and Wellington County.

The company, according to a CRC communique, is seeking to rezone the Hidden Quarry site from a Greenlands/Core Greenlands/Agricultural designation to Industrial (Extractive).

Revisions to the Wellington County official plan, and the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation decision to reduce tax assessments for pits and quarries will be part of the discussion at the meeting.

Schreiner has long championed the idea of revising legislation to prioritize the protection of farmland and water over aggregate extraction. He is a critic of the OMB, and the Aggregate Resources Act.

“My main message is that protecting water, farmland and natural heritage should have priority over new pits and quarries,” he said in an email. “My focus will be on the need to fix Ontario's broken water taking rules.”

He said progress is being made on pressuring the government to change the way water bottling companies are regulated.

“But pits and quarries are an even bigger threat to our water supply,” he wrote in the email. “I will make the case for expanding the scope of reforms to the water taking rules to pits and quarries.”

The Hidden Quarry, he added, is an example of “how broken the water taking rules are.”

He will also bring to light what he sees as problems with the province’s proposed Aggregate Resources and Mining Modernization Act.

Concerned Residents Coalition is a grassroots community organization supported by over 1200 residents. It formed in opposition to the Hidden Quarry proposal.