A public meeting will be held at Town Hall on March 6, at 6:30 p.m.,
to provide updated information from the county planning department on the
proposal to expand the Halton Crushed Stone gravel pit just south of Erin village.
Some residents of Aspen Court and the surrounding area have been
urging town council to oppose the plan, or to obtain concessions from the
company to reduce the impact of noise, water runoff, dust, traffic and visual
appearance.
The current pit is set back 300 metres from County Road 52. The
proposed 140-acre expansion of the extraction area would bring it closer (on
both sides of Tenth Line), with the company offering to make the setback 60
metres instead of 30 metres.
Residents have posed a long list of questions to the company and the
town. There remains uncertainty about why housing was allowed next to lands
zoned for gravel extraction, and why the previous pit owners did not extract
closer to the homes.
The current projection is to complete excavation in the area closest
to the subdivision within five years, based on a rate of 400,000 tonnes per
year, but HCS is not agreeing to any firm deadlines.
Other issues include the recycling and stockpiling of old asphalt
and concrete on the site and the parking of trucks on the Tenth Line.
HCS proposes to reduce stockpile heights and increase berm heights,
and to plant a mix of coniferous trees and shrubs. They will move the main
processing area to 1.2 km from the subdivision and have agreed to some changes
in the hours of operation. They are using strobe lights for safety instead of
back-up beepers on trucks in the early morning hours.
In its application for a provincial license, HCS has included the
possibility of temporarily closing the Tenth Line between the pit areas and
mining the gravel in the road allowance. This would be the last phase and would
require an agreement with a future town council. The town could be entitled to
a large quantity of free gravel for road maintenance as part of such a deal.