Since, summer is almost here, and bird presence is increasing, we need your help in spotting the bird species that are found in the proposed quarry area.

Please travel around the quarry application site, between now and July 15, 2012 and take inventory of what you see...written down, dated and witnessed.

We have had some good response from supporters so far but any more sitings would be welcome. We will start posting the sitings soon.

 Please contact info@ndact.com, with your findings.

Thank you for engaging and helping to spread the word.

Carl Cosack, NDACT Chair

(Please note that by clicking on quarry application site, here and above,  a map of the site area indicating road names is shown.)

Letters to House Leaders encouraging them to allow the ARA hearings to extend across the province.

Because of privacy issues, we have not posted letters submitted by private individuals.

From Mike Schreiner, Leader of the Green Party, submitted May 16, 2012

I strongly urge you to grant the SCGG’s request to travel and to seek further public consultation in regard to the ARA review.
I also encourage you to expand the scope of the ARA review to include policies, legislation and regulations that affect aggregates. Infrastructure investments, land use planning, waste diversion policies, and environmental protections are just a few of the ways in which government policies affect demand for and use of aggregates.

Read full letter.

Please send this quick e-mail asking for an Aggregate Resources Act Review Roadshow!

ACTION ITEM: Please contact the following MPPs/staff members and give them a bit of a push. Cut & paste the following:

The House Leaders have not yet agreed to the Standing Committee on General Government's (SCGG) request to travel in regard to the Aggregate Resource Act (ARA) Review. I am a Resident and Taxpayer of Ontario. I would like to see the SCGG visit communities that are or will be impacted by aggregate operations. I would also like to see the SCGG accept and consider further public input beyond the last scheduled ARA Review hearing tomorrow. Please answer "Yes" to the SCGG's travel request.

Thank you.

Send To: gbisson@ndp.on.ca; jmilloy.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org; john.yakabuski@pc.ola.org
CC: tamara_pomanski@ontla.ola.org; meghan_stenson@ontla.ola.org; dorazietti.mpp@liberal.ola.org; sylvia.jones@pc.ola.org

Sponsored by Rotary International and Tim Horton's

Date: May 5, 2012

Time: 9:00 AM - 12:00 Noon

Location: Rotary Park, Orangeville

NDACT will have a booth at this event.

For more details, please go to: 

http://www.orangeville-rotary.easyfocus.com/shine.html

Aggregate Resources Act Review Begins Monday May 7, 2012

They don’t mine too much aggregate in Toronto, but that’s where the provincial government’s review of the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) will be exclusively held.

As a result, Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones has expressed her outrage that the Liberal and NDP members of the Standing Committee on General Government reviewing the ARA have opted to set up shop in The Big Smoke, and set aside four days for public participation.

“I’m concerned that municipalities, industry representatives and residents most familiar with aggregates, residing in communities where aggregate extraction occurs, will be left out of the process,” Jones said in a news release. “We have an obligation to hear from the experts and they don’t live in Toronto.”

Read the entire article.

Posted in the "Orangeville Banner", May 4, 2012

Hearing dates: May 7, 2012, May 9, 2012, May 14, 2012 & May 16, 2012.

Agendas for hearing dates.

Why the rush? Not much warning and little time allowed for public participation.

In Solidarity with Wellington Water Watchers, We Need Your Help

Wellington Water Watchers is a volunteer organization which has been working steadily for 5 years now on protecting source water.

Nestlé & Hillsburgh water – What’s Up?

Nestlé Waters Canada is currently asking the province of Ontario for a 10-year extension to its existing 5-year permit to take up to 1.1 million litres of water per day from its rural Hillsburgh farm property.

• This water is trucked 24/7 in 38,000-litre tankers along our sideroads and highways to Nestlé’s Aberfoyle bottling plant, 50 kilometres away.
• It’s subsequently ozonated and injected into hundreds of millions of plastic bottles made from oil and trucked long distances to distribution centres and final markets.
• At least half the empty bottles – tens of millions each year from the Hillsburgh permit alone - end up in our landfills and incinerators, or as litter.
• Bottled water is several hundred times more expensive than tap water.
• Nestlé pays the Ministry of Environment (MOE) $3.71 per million litres.

Nestlé gets Hillsburgh water at an absurdly low price from the province. The Town of Erin receives an annual grant from Nestlé - but it’s pocket change from the world’s largest food and beverage corporation. They get 24/7 truck noise, road wear-and-tear, toxic diesel fumes, and lower property values along the route. All Ontarians get too many tonnes of plastic garbage, and the world gets a lot more of what it least needs – climate-changing carbon emissions.

Ontario's water-taking permit process is deeply flawed

Wellington Water Watchers and the Council of Canadians have submitted a Request for Review to the Ministry of Environment challenging them to honour their own Statement of Environmental Values as they relate to bottled water permits.

Short Points

Wellington Water Watchers opposes this application because:

• The amount of groundwater in our Grand River watershed is not known. Allowing large-volume water taking is like writing blank cheques on a bank account with an unknown balance.
• Water is too valuable a resource to be given away – and that’s virtually what our province does by charging Nestlé and others a mere $3.71 for every million litres taken.
• In 2010, Nestlé paid just $2,238 for over 600 million litres of water taken from Mill Creek in Aberfoyle. This works out to about .0000004 cents per litre, a far cry from the true value of such a priceless resource.
• Environmental harm being done. The millions of litres taken weekly are put into single-use, disposable plastic bottles. The industry claims 60% of these bottles are recycled but that still means hundreds of millions every year become litter, or trash in our landfills. WWW (Wellington Water Watchers) call this a permit to pollute.
• There are no water conservation measures built into this renewal permit. The volume of water taken should be decreased annually to encourage water conservation. This is one of the principles of Ontario’s new Water Opportunities Act.
• The applicant has asked for an unprecedented 10-year water-taking permit. Yet WWW have no idea how drought or climate change will affect Guelph’s water supply in years to come. At most, any new permit should be issued for three years or less.
• Much of the water when bottled leaves the Grand River watershed. Justice Dennis O’Connor’s report on the Walkerton tragedy recommended that water be managed on a watershed basis. Nestlé and others should be required to use glass, deposit-bearing bottles that are sold only within the Grand River watershed.

See full details.

How Can You Help Protect Source Water?

Submit your objections within 30 days (up until May 20, 2012) to the Ontario Minister of the Environment. See Nestle EBR submission.

Copy and past form and points of objection and instructions for online and offline submissions can be found at: http://www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca/home/the-issues/hillsburgh/

Deadline for comments is May 20, 2012