[All] Provincial push to loosen rules on aggragate extraction-Regional Council vote tomorrow

[Eleanor Grant]

So what happened at the Council meeting?
Were all in favour of the staff report?

Eleanor


On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 13:29 , <strothjkl at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Thank you Greg. They did interview the mayor of Guelph too, and she
> concurred with the RoW person that the record on cleanup and remediation
> /”restoration to former state” attempts have been voluntary and very rarely
> acted upon/done by companies after they take all they want from a site so
> far. So unless held legally to do those things, most companies won’t,
> because they don’t see what is in it for them , beyond good stewardship I
> imagine.
>
>
>
> Lori
>
>
>
> *From:* Gregory C. Michalenko <gcmichalenko at uwaterloo.ca>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 29, 2019 11:45 AM
> *To:* strothjkl at sympatico.ca; GREN <all at gren.ca>
> *Subject:* Re: [All] Provincial push to loosen rules on aggragate
> extraction-Regional Council vote tomorrow
>
>
>
> Thanks for sending this Lori.  I've been in touch with the Region planners
> and seen the report they have crafted.  The proposed changes to provincial
> planning legislation have three particularly horrible "reforms":
> prohibition of municipalities imposing stricter regulations on gravel
> extraction than the Province, such as the Region of Waterloo's regulation
> that a 1.5 meter protective buffer has to be left; allowing developments
> like gravel extraction to occur in designated natural heritage sites on the
> flimsy grounds of a claim that eventual rehabilitation can restore it
> (e.g., a significant forest could be cut down and grubbed out); and a
> requirement that municipal assessment of housing development proposals
> should take into account "market value" (much more profit can be made on
> single detached house construction than on social housing: this could give
> such proposals the edge in appeals to the resurrected OMB).  And there is
> much more.  The Ford bunch are as bad as ever despite the cheery chirping
> after the federal election about how they want to be good buddies and
> cooperate with other jurisdictions.
>
>
>
> You can see the report that will be delivered at the council meeting by
> going to the Region website and clicking on the agenda for the council
> meeting, which includes the document package that councillors receive a few
> days prior to meetings.  You can submit a comment to the Environmental
> Registry, but the deadline is very close - November 4th.  I'm composing a
> comment on behalf of GREN today and will circulate it to the GREN list
> tomorrow..
>
> - Greg Michalenko
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* All <all-bounces at gren.ca> on behalf of strothjkl at sympatico.ca <
> strothjkl at sympatico.ca>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:42 AM
> *To:* GREN
> *Subject:* [All] Provincial push to loosen rules on aggragate
> extraction-Regional Council vote tomorrow
>
>
>
>
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/province-s-plans-to-change-gravel-pit-rules-could-harm-local-water-natural-areas-report-1.5338478
>   This is to be voted on at Regional Council tomorrow.
>
>
> <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/province-s-plans-to-change-gravel-pit-rules-could-harm-local-water-natural-areas-report-1.5338478>
>
> www.cbc.ca
>
> Regional staff are urging the province to reconsider changes that would
> loosen rules around gravel mining and other aggregate extraction.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> This morning on CBC-KW they interviewed a Land Use Planning staffperson
> from the Region of Waterloo, I imagine the same one quoted in the article
> above,  and he said they have written up their views against it -and their
> position paper on this will be voted on at Regional Council tomorrow -Wed.
> Oct. 30th…and then they will send it to the Ford people. One of the primary
> concerns here is that if construction is allowed to go too deep, below the
> water table, it could contaminate our aquifers, so at a bare minimum, they
> want it to be stipulated that anything approved has to be above the
> waterline.  But it sounds like they are completely against the concept in
> general.  This involves many other types of projects- not just aggragate.
>
>
>
> Lori S.
> _______________________________________________
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> All at gren.ca
> http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca
>
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