Monster mine plan cuts deep into Ontario farmland

Imagine a hole in the ground, the size of 2,000 football fields and deeper than the gorge at Niagara Falls. Sound a little scary? Now imagine that this gaping hole, at the headwaters of two major river systems in Ontario, isn't subject to an environmental assessment.

Say what?

In Ontario, you need have an environmental assessment done before you can build a house. However, if you want to dig a 200-foot deep, 2,400-acre hole in prime Ontario farmland, you just need to apply to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for a license to mine aggregate. In fact, a license to dig the largest limestone quarry in Canada has been applied for in Melancthon Township, a farming community about 1.5 hours north of Toronto. That's potato country, and proposed quarry has some people very concerned.

In 2006, local entrepreneur and Highland Group head John Lowndes began buying up parcels of prime potato land in Melancthon Township. Some local farmers, struggling with increased costs and lower market prices, reluctantly saw selling to The Highland Group as a way out of the economically depressed agricultural sector. As the Highland holdings increased, Lowndes continued to assure people that he would continue potato farming. To be fair, he did just that.

The Highland Group web site boasts that their "locally-based potato farming operation is the largest in Ontario," and local residents assumed that all the Highland Group really wanted to do. Highland's interests, however, aren't confined to growing potatoes.

Backed by a $23 billion U.S.-based hedge fund, Lowndes' Highland Group of Companies are "the largest landowner, taxpayer, employer and private sector donor in (Melancthon)," and they want to mine limestone aggregate -- in a very big way. The proposed U.S.-owned quarry will be the second largest of its kind in North America, with a potential of pulling some $16 billion out of the land that feeds us. At this point, all that's standing in its way are a group of very concerned and determined Ontario voters.

One would think that a project of this magnitude would need some kind of environmental study, but under the Aggregate Resources Act, a limestone quarry doesn't require an environmental impact assessment, even one so massive that they call it a "mega-quarry."

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Source: Rabble.ca