In the news this week... GREY BRUCE THIS WEEK NEWSPAPER March 6, 2014 Resident Concerned About Grey County Area Did you hear about that new gravel pit near Berkeley? The pit near Durham? Near Markdale? Did you hear about the Bio-Solid plant in Dundalk? What about those windmill turbines near Priceville? What’s happening with that DGR (Deep Geological Respository for low and intermediate radioactive waste) in the Kincardine area? Is that biodigester thing still going in somewhere around Walters Falls? Is it true that Sydenham is seceding from the Municipality of Meaford? What’s going on here? Sure, we read about these industrial developments, we hear about them on the radio. As long as those places are a not in our backyard, why should we worry about them? We breathe the same air folks. Most of us also drink the same water. The highways and byways are common roads for all our travels. Protecting the environment is everyone’s responsibility. So is Public Health. Our food comes from the same fields. We share the same values. We all want protection of our rural lifestyles. We all have friends and family looking for work. Especially in the housing and home improvement industry. Many of us are elderly and depend on the value of our homes to base our future needs upon. Small businesses thrive on a stable population. Attracting and keeping young families with consumer demands should be a driving priority of Counties and Townships. How many empty storefronts are we willing to walk by? But who will want to build or buy property in an industrial wasteland? Who wants to hike, cycle, fish, hunt, camp, play golf, swim and watch the sunsets in a scarred landscape? It’s not about no industry, no windmills or no pits and quarries. It’s all about “where” and “how” and “why”. And, most of all it’s about balance. Is Grey County maintaining a balance between its competing interests: agriculture, tourism, industry, a healthy place to live, open a business, raise a family and retire? According to the Township of Chatsworth, 44 of the last 45 applications for pits and quarries were approved. Time to tip the scales the other way, don’t you think? In the Township of Chatsworth, the Bumstead Pit is going to cost the taxpayers an increase of 4% minimum, in property taxes. That’s to pay for the road upgrades, repairs and other costs of the proponents doing business. There are other costs: losses in property values (up to 30%), the loss of Prime Agricultural land and productivity on neighbouring farms, the loss of tax assessment, the loss of housing and farm development on 60 Sideroad road, the risks to health, to the Bell’s Lake Watershed, to road safety and to the environment. Does anyone think this is an acceptable price to pay so that our neighbours can add millions of dollars to their retirement fund? Increasing isolation is an overlooked consequence of industrialization. With growing disinterest from city residents, to holiday or retire here, we are deprived of the vitality of economic and social connections to the larger world. Locked in our individual struggles against development incompatible with our homes and farms, we become isolated from each other. For the people living in Berkeley at the crossroads of Sideroad 60 and Highway 10, the proposed Bumstead Pit will mean a loss of 65 daylight hours a week, in the summer, when residents and their children will have to remain indoors. For the next 18 – 20 years. Why? Dust particulates and diesel fume emissions. And noise. The expected number of gravel pit trucks turning onto Highway 10 from Berkeley is 50 – 100 per day. No intersection lights. No turning lanes. No clear sight lines. Homes with no setback from the road. Seven school buses, twice a day on our road, already made hazardous by hills, a tight S-bend, wetlands and hazard lands. In the Benefits side of the ledger there is nothing. Even tax revenues and royalties from the pit will not be enough to balance the costs in the long term. In order to make up the shortfall, Chatsworth councillors will have to raise funds from somewhere – raising taxes, charging higher fees and lowering or eliminating grants to business and cutbacks to services. Economic distress is happening in every municipality. To the extent that amalgamation into one big entity is inevitable. That’s a cost to local democracy. Too bad if Sydenham secedes. Is separation from our local elected government the only way to preserve our rural way of life? There are lots of complex reasons to rural economic and social decline. With respect to our communities, though, we need to be sure that windmill turbines, pits and quarries a bio solid plant do not create new risks to health and safety nor contribute to existing economic hardships and to the devaluation of our rural lifestyle. Industrial development projects should bear the full cost of doing business, should protect the established social and economic life of a community. Guarantee our health and safety. Industrial development should be directed away from residential and agricultural land use. And provide a net benefit to the community in which it wishes to be established. Brian and Pearl Bumstead, former co-chairs of the 2004 International Plowing Match, have applied for a Class “A” Category 1 (beneath the water table) licence to extract gravel on their 100 acre farm. Now, what is everybody going to do about that? We can start by writing letters. Or email or phone your elected representatives in Township, County and Provincial offices. Demand that they get up from behind their computers and come see for themselves the decline and depression of rural Ontario. It’s happening in all our backyards. Anne Kurita CHATSWORTH TAXPAYERS FOR A SAFE AND HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 13:59:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015