Barlow Niagara Falls

Monster mine plan cuts deep into Ontario farmland

Imagine a hole in the ground, the size of 2,000 football fields and deeper than the gorge at Niagara Falls. Sound a little scary? Now imagine that this gaping hole, at the headwaters of two major river systems in Ontario, isn't subject to an environmental assessment.

Say what?

In Ontario, you need have an environmental assessment done before you can build a house. However, if you want to dig a 200-foot deep, 2,400-acre hole in prime Ontario farmland, you just need to apply to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for a license to mine aggregate. In fact, a license to dig the largest limestone quarry in Canada has been applied for in Melancthon Township, a farming community about 1.5 hours north of Toronto. That's potato country, and proposed quarry has some people very concerned.

In 2006, local entrepreneur and Highland Group head John Lowndes began buying up parcels of prime potato land in Melancthon Township. Some local farmers, struggling with increased costs and lower market prices, reluctantly saw selling to The Highland Group as a way out of the economically depressed agricultural sector. As the Highland holdings increased, Lowndes continued to assure people that he would continue potato farming. To be fair, he did just that.

The Highland Group web site boasts that their "locally-based potato farming operation is the largest in Ontario," and local residents assumed that all the Highland Group really wanted to do. Highland's interests, however, aren't confined to growing potatoes.

Backed by a $23 billion U.S.-based hedge fund, Lowndes' Highland Group of Companies are "the largest landowner, taxpayer, employer and private sector donor in (Melancthon)," and they want to mine limestone aggregate -- in a very big way. The proposed U.S.-owned quarry will be the second largest of its kind in North America, with a potential of pulling some $16 billion out of the land that feeds us. At this point, all that's standing in its way are a group of very concerned and determined Ontario voters.

One would think that a project of this magnitude would need some kind of environmental study, but under the Aggregate Resources Act, a limestone quarry doesn't require an environmental impact assessment, even one so massive that they call it a "mega-quarry."

Carl Cosack is a local organic beef farmer and spokesperson for NDACT -- the North Dufferin County Agricultural and Community Taskforce. He and several community members are deeply concerned about the proposed quarry's impact on both the community and the environment.

Niagara Falls Jan Winther Photography

They say that visitors shoot more than 10 million pictures at Niagara Falls every year. So I thought I would join the fun and shot some images while I was there anyway. I was in Buffalo for “The Flash Bus Tour” with David Hobby and Joe McNally. (Absolutely amazing event. I hope you got a chance to check it out). Anyway, when you go to Buffalo, you gotta go see the falls. Its going to cost you a dollar to cross the bridge, so it’s a cheap place to go for a spectacular view. Its been 10 years since I last went there, so it was nice to be back.

In early April the Maid of the Mist is still in the dock, but they still light the falls at night which what i hoped for and what I wanted to capture. So after a bite at the Red Inn just up the road from the falls, we went to back to check out the light show. Amazing.

The light changes colors, and I was fortunate to get a shot of the red on the American Falls. The big red blob in the shot is ice, which looks really cool with layers of different colored ice.

The Niagara Falls companion, and fashionable miscellany

The National union catalog, pre-1956 imprints, a cumulative author list representing Library of Congress printed cards and titles reported by other American libraries

The new Niagara, tourism, technology, and the landscape of Niagara Falls, 1776-1917

John's trip, or A visit to Niagara, A serio-comic poem, in four cantos

Report on the Pictou coal field, Nova Scotia