Public finally learns of zoning process

IN A REFRESHING CHANGE OF PACE, opponents of a huge quarry proposed for Melancthon have now learned from the horse's mouth, so to speak, of the tortuous path to be followed toward approval or rejection of the required zoning application.

We commend Melancthon council for arranging a public meeting that included all involved provincial ministries and the township planner at Honeywood Monday evening.

If there is a point of criticism, it is that the meeting was not held earlier — at least prior to the point at which the council was forced by public pressure to take a position on a quarry application it had yet to see.

We can only guess at how the Ontario Municipal Board — which will have the final word on the application — is going to react to a council position of, in effect, saying, "we don't care what exactly they want, we are against it."

We have our concerns about the proposal. But how can we, or ordinary citizens, judge when the only available information is that the proposal is for a 2,400-acre quarry designed to be rehabilitated to farmland rather than a lake, when there are scant details about how such can be accomplished, particularly when quarries away from an escarpment edge always wind up as lakes?

Apart from Monday's meeting in both time and place, a Ministry of Natural Resources official said in confidence that it would be difficult for the proponent to show that a 200-foot-deep excavation could be rehabilitated to farmland.

There is no doubt that the ministries will be taking a critical and in-depth review of the proposal. Opponents might take comfort in the fact that it took about three years for Strada to win approval of a gravel pit in Melancthon and about seven years for the Lockyer pits on Hurontario Street in Mono to gain approval of an abovewater table expansion of its pits.

The Melancthon megaquarry is a long way down the road, if at all. We shall be watching the process with great interest.