An American-backed company that assembled farmland north of Orangeville to grow potatoes has applied to develop one of Canada’s biggest rock quarries.

But neighbouring farmers are warning of environmental and community consequences if it’s allowed to proceed.

The Highland Companies, backed by Boston-based hedge fund Baupost Group, proposes to dig what it calls a “mega-quarry” from a top-quality limestone deposit just north of Shelburne in Melancthon Township.

The quarry lands are to stretch five kilometres across and plunge 200 feet down, farther than the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. A “mega-quarry” is defined as having a rock reserve of at least 150 million tonnes. The Highland reserve has 1 billion tonnes, part of a 6-billion-tonne deposit.

People protesting the quarry held a rally at Queen’s Park on Friday and began a five-day walk 100 kilometres north to the quarry site. The deadline for written objections to the project is their arrival day, Tuesday.

“The (company) application runs more than 3,100 pages, and took five years and 20 consulting firms to create,” says area cattle rancher and horse trainer Carl Cosack, a rally participant. “The public was given 45 days to respond.”

The Highland Cos. first showed itself in Melancthon Township in 2006, in the form of John Lowndes and the name Headwater Farms.

Lowndes started buying properties at $8,000 an acre in a region that has long been poorly serviced and economically depressed. The price included “a significant premium over market value,” company spokesman Michael Daniher says.

Eventually, Lowndes assembled more than 3,400 hectares (8,500 acres), including the area’s two largest potato operations — Downey Potato Farms and Wilson Farms — turning Highland into Ontario’s biggest potato grower, packer and distributor. It produces 45.5 million kilograms (100 million pounds) a year.

Lowndes, an Orangeville civil engineer and entrepreneur now living in nearby Alton, continues as sole company director.

In assembling its lands, the company bulldozed 30 farmhouses, many dating to the 1800s, along with trees, bush lots, and modern storage and processing facilities, says rancher Cosack, who is also vice-chair of the citizens’ group North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Task Force (NDACT).

“Rural communities are fairly small,” Cosack says of the destruction of the area’s rural character. “When you start taking out houses where people used to live, people who go to church and go to the hockey arena and who volunteer places — that just got under the skin of a lot of people.”

When Highland started drilling for what it said were irrigation wells, Cosack says, people got suspicious and began to organize.

Although Highland didn’t have to, Daniher says, it held a public meeting in 2009 laying out the proposal for a quarry occupying 940 hectares.

“Aggregates are one of the foundations of our modern society,” a company report says of materials used for everything from highway construction to skyscraper windows.

The quarry would be ideally situated, the report says, close to markets but outside the environmentally designated Greenbelt and Niagara Escarpment. The quarry would serve Ontario’s needs for decades, it says, with 90 per cent of the aggregate going to construction in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, and 10 per cent to Barrie.

Opponents, which include Citizens’ Alliance for a Sustainable Environment (CAUSE), question whether the markets will stay local.

Three years ago, Highlands agreed to buy a rail line between Orangeville and Mississauga, and it’s negotiating purchase of a rail right-of-way to the Great Lakes port of Owen Sound, spokesman Daniher confirms.

Just as potatoes form one of Highland’s business interests, so do railways, he says. No foreign markets and no expansion of the proposed quarry are planned, he says.

Opponents raise truck traffic and water management as other areas of top concern.

Because the water table in Melancthon Township is high, Highland would have to pump 600 million litres of water a day from the quarry, equivalent to the volume used by 2.7 million Ontarians.

Having to store the water for three days to reduce sediment means having to handle 1.8 billion litres of water per day, both sides agree. The technology exists to manage such volumes, the company says.

As for truck traffic, Highland’s application proposes to finance road improvements if its requirements exceed 150 40-tonne trucks per hour, 24 hours a day, every day except statutory holidays.

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Opponents also express concerns about groundwater degradation and other environmental damage.

“If I had a two-acre lot and wanted to build a house (in Melancthon Township),” Cosack says, “I would need an environmental assessment.”

Under Ontario law, an environmental assessment is not required for a mega-quarry.