Afternoon rain couldn't dampen the spirits of those attending today's (Saturday) rally at Victoria Park to stop the Campbellville quarry.
Grassroots group ACTION Milton and local officials — joined by Liberal and NDP party leaders Bonnie Crombie and Marit Stiles, alongside three byelection candidates — made impassioned pleas for Premier Doug Ford to keep his commitment to end the quarry.
“Why do you need an environmental assessment to prove this is wrong?” George Minakakis, chair of ACTION Milton, said in his remarks — referring to the environmental assessment process triggered by proponent James Dick Construction Ltd. (JDCL) last December, following the environment ministry's designation in 2021.
“You made a promise four years ago. (We’re) still waiting.”
PC candidate Zee Hamid, invited by the organizer, was a no show. But he reiterated Ford’s stance during an all-candidates debate on Tuesday, stating that the premier has spoken on record several times about his opposition.
Hamid said letting the process continue “is the right way of stopping the quarry.”
But there was still a lot of skepticism.
In a fiery speech, Coun. Kristina Tesser Derksen told the crowd of about a hundred that: “We're going to be saying ‘hell no’ until the right thing is done and the province shuts down this application.”
Crombie said the premier could cancel the quarry “with a stroke of a pen,” while Stiles said the community can “flip this around” by working together.
Among those in attendance, Sev Canzona -- who came with his wife -- said it’s encouraging to see this kind of community engagement.
While he said he doesn’t have a deep level of understanding of the issue, he has heard about the potential impact of the quarry on the water source.
“The fact that they’re going to dig a giant hole in the ground, it’s probably going to affect more than the local area,” Canzona said.
JDCL filed for the application to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in 2018 for a pit and quarry and asphalt reprocessing plant — with plans to extract up to 990,000 tons of aggregate annually by underwater blasting. The company states that “high quality aggregates are required to construct the housing, industry and infrastructure” to support growth in the province for decades to come.
Concerns raised about the quarry range from health and environmental impacts to noise and traffic.
Minakakis said they include potential risks to Campbellville’s water supply and more than 20,000 residents in downtown Milton and dust from 60,000 gravel truck trips annually, as well as the site’s “alarming” proximity to Hwy. 401 — about 100 metres — which would lead to “disastrous consequences.”
With the byelection just a few days away, Minakakis calls out the use of “political bait” to sway residents, urging the premier "stop this today.”