WIKIPEDIA DEFINES ‘oxymoron’ (from Greek ...µ...., “sharp dull”) as “a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms.”

Well, we submit that in these days there’s really no longer such a thing as a “popular project,” particularly if it’s large and potentially costly.

That wasn’t always the case. A look at local papers published back in the 1920s and 1930s shows unqualified support for the concrete paving of Highways 9 and 10 through Dufferin. But half a century later, the plan to pave the road between Mount Forest and Shelburne raised opposition from Shelburne merchants who saw themselves losing out to their Mount Forest counterparts.

In Dufferin today, the biggest single project contemplated by County Council is the Dufferin EcoEnergy Park (DEEP), at a 200- acre site in the Grand River watershed that was once to be a landfill.

After at least three decades spent trying to figure out the best means of handling solid wastes generated in the county, Council is now looking at using the site for two plants that would handle all forms of solid wastes, with most going to a state-of-the-art plasma gasification plant that would produce some electricity and an inert byproduct that could be used as roadfill or simply left on-site.

Without a doubt, the proposal is infinitely better than an ordinary landfill. Yet there’s a growing danger that all we’ll see is new studies of potential alternatives, thanks to a recent report to Mono Council that portrays the Westinghouse plasma arc technology used by proponent Alter NRG as unsuitable for Dufferin, primarily on economic grounds, and suggests alternatives could cost less and not require a plant of the size now envisioned.

Well, as we see it, there’s clearly no such thing as a risk-free means of handling solid wastes, and a County delegation has been shown the same technology being used successfully in Japan.

Although it may well be that Dufferin itself doesn’t currently generate enough solid wastes to employ the proposed plant’s full capacity, there surely is no doubt that wastes can be “imported” from adjoining counties and regions, nor that this outcome would be vastly superior to the present situation, which sees most of Dufferin’s wastes being exported to Michigan.

Thankfully, opposition to the DEEP proposals is mild compared with that to the Melancthon mega-quarry proposed by The Highland Companies, which is no doubt the most unpopular project ever conceived locally.

However, there’s no doubt, either, that there’s a growing demand for aggregate in southern Ontario; that existing pits and quarries won’t last forever, or that the Niagara Escarpment is an ideal location for new pits and quarries.

We think the real questions to be asked relate mainly to the size and location of the needed new quarries.

We’ve never understood why Highland has sought approval for so large a quarry operation at a site that happens to have some of Ontario’s best farmland.

It strikes us that alternative sites just a few kilometres to the north or west have much poorer farmland that’s still underlain by the Escarpment’s valuable limestone – and a site to the west would be even closer to the abandoned railway that Highland proposes to restore.

As for size, Highland would likely find a lot less opposition if it initially sought approval for an operation occupying 300 or 400 acres instead of the proposed 2,300.

That clearly wouldn’t be so unpopular.