Good luck to our friends with Concerned Citizens of Brant who are holding an organizing meeting this Saturday in Paris, Ontario. They are fighting against a proposed 614-acre gravel pit on farmland just north of their town.
A news report says, “The group contends that the company should not be allowed to open, on the strength of a 40-year-old licence, a pit that poses a risk to community’s water supply from an aquifer. …The group is trying to convince the Ontario government to order an environmental assessment for the company to gain a water-taking permit, and a class environmental assessment to upgrade roads that serve the truck transport of gravel to markets.”
“Sandra Parsons, who co-chairs the group, has a letter from Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians who has pledged her group’s support and resources. …Barlow writes, ‘The last rewrite of the provincial Aggregate Resources Act has disappointed communities across Ontario. Our demands for robust regulations to protect land and water were ignored. The lesson is that it is up to the communities themselves to protect what is most important. We have the right to water and we have the obligation to protect it.'”
This issue first came to our attention in April 2012.
Photo by the Expositor.
