Niagara Falls holding open house on new quarry application tomorrow
Published March 22, 2022 at 1:18 pm
Right now, it’s just an application submitted to Niagara Falls City Hall, as well as Niagara Region, but being as the proposal is for a quarry, which are always large in scale, the city wants early input from residents.
Walker Aggregates Inc is hoping to turn a 103.6 hectares piece of land situated east of Thorold Townline Road, west of Beechwood Road and abutting the north and south side of Upper’s Lane into a limestone quarry. (Map below)
(Limestone is traditionally used in home construction, road construction and maintenance, erosion control and landscape projects.)
However, should the city and region consider it a viable application, residents should know that quarries have a shelf-life of between 40 to 50 years. While construction materials are always needed by builders, the long-time ramifications to the community have to be weighed heavily against that as it will affect at least the next two generations.
That said, they are a huge number of hurdles still to clear for Walker Aggregates. For starters, the land is currently zoned as Good General Agriculture, an Environmental Conservation Area and an Environmental Protection Area, the latter two of which are not redesignated easily.
What should be of chief concern when it comes to quarries is noise. The initial stripping the land of top soil and subsoil involves large trucks coming back and forth to the sites to transport the earth around the 11 million square foot area encompassed by the proposed quarry.
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Following that is when the on-site volume gets cranked up. Creating a quarry involved the erections of berm for stabilization of the site and then subsequent drilling and blasting, as well as on-site trucking of the aggregate to various locations on the extraction, transportation of aggregate internally within the site, processing, washing, stockpiling, shipping aggregate off-site and rehabilitation.
Right now, the application is before Niagara Falls, Niagara Region and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. Another addition consideration is that if both Niagara and Niagara Falls turn thumbs down on the proposal, their lack of consent can overturned by a provincial Ministerial Zoning Order, a over-riding tool created by the present Provincial government.
To attend tomorrow’s Niagara Falls Open House, as well as the future Public Meeting of Council on the application, email: [email protected]
Residents can also send any thoughts or concerns to: [email protected]
The blue area is the spot where Walker Aggregates is hoping to create a new quarry.