Subject: Saving North Dufferin:

We recently attended a meeting in Kitchener regarding quarries. We heard a young farm lady from North Dufferin describe the struggle of farmers to save the best farmland in Ontario for food production, rather than an open pit mine.

Being a former citizen of Melancthon Township, I am appalled that farmers alone must defend this invasion against foodland.

This should become a duty of every citizen of Dufferin County, regardless of station in life, to stand ready and defeat any force coming from somewhere beyond that destroys farmsteads with bulldozers, and the legacy of farm family generations.

This situation reaches out far beyond Dufferin. For example, in this area of Waterloo Region, the Grand River is very important to our water supply. Yet a mine 200 feet deep will draw water from miles around, and may very well affect the supply of that river, to say nothing of dry wells of communities in the area. However, none of these facts appear to attract any attention from our Regional Council, nor even our local daily newspaper.

This is now a concern for the “people” of Ontario, not only farmers, to save our most precious foodland from becoming ashes in a pit, from which the lime will be shipped out of the country on rails that will take more farmland.

Surely, saving this foodland and a most beautiful part of our country from being scarred forever, is not negotiable.

Edwin Morden

Elmira, Ont.