The practice of dumping…

The practice of dumping industrial/residential fill into old pits and quarries may, on the surface, sound like a good idea. Clearly, we have a problem with all the fill resulting in the panic to build more houses. Once again, there are unforeseen circumstances associated with what feels like a free-for-all approach to building new homes. Clearly, the province has a housing shortage, but solving it at the expense of the natural environment and the social environment of small communities where the populations are being doubled or more virtually overnight, is not good policy. Similarly, building all this housing and approving so many pits and quarries is putting more stress on roads that are already insufficient to carry their current load.

I live near a road that is subject to an unprecedented increase in truck and commuter traffic. In addition to being unsized to carry its current load, much less the increase that is and will result from possible industrial and residential development, it has two bridges that, I worry are not up to the increased traffic. I worry about this because as far as I know there are no studies looking into these bridges.

In practice of dumping fill into old pits also suffers from the lack of control on what contaminants may be in the fill. As I understand it, the method of determining if the fill is "clean," is completely inadequate. Yet, the old quarry ponds that are to be filled communicate with ground water and other surface water that provide drinking water and wildlife habitat.

Clearly, this mad dash for housing in the GTA and the GGH is going too fast. It's leading to serious problems with the social and environmental/climate change fabric of our province.

As politically unpopular it might be, Ontario needs to slow down with its housing plans and come up with a well-thought out plan much like the Places to Grow strategy that was formally in place.