Comment ID: 195000 This…

Comment ID: 195000

This application for change of zonage from agricultural to heavy industry, will greatly damage our precious environment. The areas affected will include up to a 50 km radius as well as our Heritage Ottawa River. We are an agricultural based community, and such a plant would be a disaster to the ecological environment we live in. Also this plant will create a great amount of noise pollution, along with heavy machinery including a 24-7 trucking along our highways, which will lead to significant danger for motorists. What's more trucks coming down from Harrington will greatly increase and travel along the old highway 17 to the Colacem plant, and then from the plant along highway 17 towards Montreal port. This is preposterous! We are told that there will be a truck every 45 seconds 24 hours per day. The congestion along narrowing such as the Perly bridge especially over weekend, will simply spell disaster. Why turn our precious area up side down, over a cement plant that does not even serve our area? It simply is not fare and will not be tolerated! Tourism will suffer. The expansion of our Hawkesbury General Hospital will also bring us jobs. Theses jobs will not damage our environment but improve the health and well being of our Ontario and neighbouring Quebec citizens. This proposal of a cement plant will only bring few jobs which is not even proven, and all the environmental damage that this will produce along with increasing cancer mortalities from its byproducts. The hospital expansion vs a cement plant is an example of an oxymoron. Cement plants such as these need to be away from large centres, and built only when there is a need. Presently cement factories are only about 60% in demand, so why build more and why in our backdoor?