Yesterday at City Hall Mayor Meed Ward and all Councillors voted unanimously for a Resolution asking Premier Doug Ford and MPP-Elect Zee Hamid (PC) to halt the Nelson Aggregates mega-quarry application and put proper Niagara Escarpment designations on Mount Nemo lands.
The City of Burlington hereby asks the Province of Ontario to:
- Deny the current application by Nelson Aggregates for expansion of the Mount Nemo open-pit quarry, and
- Establish long-term protection through the redesignation of the Mount Nemo Plateau to Escarpment Natural and Escarpment Protection.
CORE (Conserving Our Rural Ecosystems) Burlington and PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land), two volunteer community groups in the area, are pleased that the City of Burlington is joining them in appealing to the Premier Ford and MPP-Elect Zee Hamid to use common sense and stop this unwanted Nelson quarry application.
The Niagara Escarpment Commission recommended these new protective NEP designation updates be adopted in 2016. These recommendations came after the 2012 decision of the Consolidated Hearing Board to deny Nelson Aggregate its application to re-designate its Niagara Escarpment property to “Escarpment Extraction”.
That quarry application was opposed by PERL, the City of Burlington, Halton Region, Conservation Halton and the Niagara Escarpment Commission.
“It is a complete waste of taxpayer funds to be re-considering this application when it was denied in 2012,” said Gord Pinard of CORE. “We are reassured by Mr. Hamid’s previous vote as Halton Regional councillor to oppose this quarry proposal. When we met in April he gave us his personal assurance that he would fight to protect Burlington’s vulnerable escarpment and help stop the quarry.”
Roger Goulet, a director of PERL, stated, “We are very happy to see the Mayor and Council unanimously pick up the torch from previous councils and staff, and work to secure the proper protections for the Mount Nemo plateau within Niagara Escarpment Plan. Niagara Escarpment Commission recommended these changes to the Province during the last review in 2016."
Nelson Aggregates submitted an application in 2019 for two new licenses to expand their extraction areas to the south and west of the current 540 acre open-pit quarry lands of Burlington’s Mount Nemo plateau. The total size of the new mines would be 124 acres, 18% larger than the 2012 Joint Board denied extraction footprint (105 acres). That’s the same size as 62 CFL football fields.
