The county continues its struggle to preserve prime agricultural land for agriculture: Newsletter 2014 03
Melancthon residents – the mayor, farmers, residents -share their opinions on the proposed mega quarry that threatens the area’s agricultural industry.
Highland sells land to Bonneville Financial, A Farmland Investment and Management Firm. This wonderful farmland will continue to grow food. Now we need to change the law to make food and water first.
NDACT runs Food and Water First Campaign. Support it with your letters. 2013 02 28
We Won!
Highland Companies Withdraws Its Application for a Quarry in Melancthon Township
MELANCTHON TOWNSHIP, November 21, 2012 — The Highland Companies (Highland) announced today that it is withdrawing its application to develop a quarry in Melancthon Township. Highland also intends to discontinue its efforts to restore the rail corridor through Dufferin County. In addition, Highland announced that John Lowndes has resigned from his role as President and has no further involvement with the company.
“While we believe that the quarry would have brought significant economic benefit to Melancthon Township and served Ontario’s well-documented need for aggregate, we acknowledge that the application does not have sufficient support from the community and government to justify proceeding with the approval process,” said John Scherer of The Highland Companies.
Highland will continue to focus on its farms and on supplying its customers with high quality potatoes and other crops. The company is proud of the improvements it has made through modernizing equipment and storage facilities as well as enhancing food and worker safety.
For information, please contact:
Media:
Lindsay Broadhead
Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Lindsay.broadhead@hkstrategies.ca
416-413-4693
Latest News and Calendar of Events to Stop the Quarry
NDACT Call to Action by March 29, 2012
The Highland Companies, funded by the Baupost Hedge Fund, are proposing to build a 2300 acre limestone quarry, North of Shelburne on prime agricultural land. It would be the second largest quarry in North America. They will “industrialize” the landscape in this large area, right next to the Niagara Escarpment, a World Heritage site. We anticipate that as a result of this large project, we will see the following effects:
- Severe damage to the Pine river including destruction of fish habitat
- Major distruption to the quality of life of the people of Dufferin County because of major increases in road traffic by large trucks in highly populated areas.
- Potential major pollution of the Amabel-Lockport-Guelph aquifer that forms the headwaters of five major river systems and supplies drinking water to over a million people and many other species including fox, coyote, wolf, beaver, lynx, rabbit, deer, ducks, geese, turkey, pike, pickerel, trout, salmon, turtles, salamanders, snakes, and many others who thrive & rely upon these rivers.
Click here for a comprehensive article and video telling both sides of the story by the Toronto Star
The project is close to our beloved Unicamp. We anticipate it may endanger the water supply to wells, springs (Unicamp is spring fed), and generally effect the ground water in the area.