Words do little to comfort a community at the centre of a quarry quandary.
About four years after Premier Doug Ford vowed he’d stop the proposed Reid Road Reservoir Quarry in Campbellville in a sign of support for the relentless opposition by residents and the Town, there is seemingly no end in sight — with James Dick Construction Ltd. (JDCL) triggering the Environmental Assessment (EA) process last December.
“None of this makes sense,” said George Minakakis, chair of ACTION Milton, an advocacy group that has been galvanizing citizens to take a stand against the plan. “If you know you’re going to stop this quarry from happening, why bother with the EA?”
The citizens group organized a community meeting in late March, drawing more than 200 residents, officials and politicians, including Green Party’s Mike Schreiner and Milton provincial byelection candidates. At the meeting, Minakakis called out the premier and highlighted worries about the environmental review process serving as “a path to approval.”
But Zeeshan Hamid, a former councillor now running for the PCs in the byelection, assured the audience that Ford intends to keep his promise while letting the process “play out.” This was countered by byelection Liberal flagbearer Galen Naidoo Harris, saying: “the time for words is done and it’s time for action.”
The approximately 72-acre site is located at 9210 Twiss Rd. While zoned to permit a quarry, the previous operator’s licence was revoked in 2008.
JDCL filed for the application to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in 2018 for a pit and quarry and asphalt reprocessing plant — with plans to extract up to 990,000 tons of aggregate annually by underwater blasting. The proponent states that “high quality aggregates are required to construct the housing, industry and infrastructure” to support growth in the province for decades to come.
As the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) application continued, both the Town and Halton Region raised objections, citing unaddressed concerns regarding the environment, ground and surface water resources, and rehabilitation plans. In July 2021, the environment ministry ordered the project to undergo an environmental assessment at the request of then-MPP Parm Gill.
The Town said it is, again, taking part as a commenting agency — along with the Region and others — as a member of the Joint Agency Review Team.
Most recently, council members unanimously voted to reaffirm their opposition to the quarry and for the premier to “honour his promise.”
“The community in Campbellville has been facing this down for the past five years. And it really stretches beyond the boundaries of Campbellville,” Coun. Kristina Tesser Derksen said at the March 25 council meeting, sharing concern about the potential impact of underwater blasting on the aquifer, a crucial water source for residents in downtown Milton.
Coun. Colin Best added that there are enough quarries in Ontario that could supply the needs of the province for decades.
Amid the controversy, JDCL is forging ahead — albeit with some lack of clarity on what to make of the premier’s intention.
“It is definitely a weird situation,“ Greg Sweetnam, executive vice president of JDCL, said in a statement. “The government has legislation to do a political shutdown of a project if they deem that is something they want to do, but that of course involves compensation to affected land owners.”
Sweetnam said that there has been no official contact with the premier’s office to date.
The company held a public information meeting back in December, with two more meetings scheduled at later dates.
For Minakakis and ACTION Milton, whose opposition got a boost from the NDP at Queen’s Park, the decision should be clear.
“Just end this thing,“ he said. “We're all dedicated to seeing this through to the end. We're not going to quit. As long as the community shares their support behind us, we're not going to stop and we're going to push very hard.”
