Newsletter

Community Alert:

St Marys Haul Route Evaluation Public Information Centre

St Marys Cement has published notice of a Public Information Centre Meeting to be held Thursday June 21st from 5 to 8 pm at The Auditorium of the Royal Botanical Gardens 680 Plains Road West, Burlington. This meeting is one of a series of meetings required under the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the Haul Route Evaluation Study issued by the City of Hamilton in April 2006. This first meeting was to raise initial public concerns and to identify how the public would like to be involved with the study.

Unfortunately St Marys has chosen not to follow the minimum requirements contained in the TOR for public consultation and has chosen a venue that is almost 20km away from the proposed quarry site and at the farthest edge of the study area. The City of Hamilton has acknowledged many of the same concerns that we have raised but to ensure that our comments are formally added to the application file FORCE has written to the City of Hamilton to document the many ways St Marys has failed to comply with the TOR.

Examples include:

• Failure to provide a minimum of two weeks notice of the meeting,
• Failure to provide notice of Study Initiation and failure to provide background information on the study itself,
• Failure to provide relevant information in the event notice such as:
  • the location of the proposed quarry,
  • the haul route study area,
  • the days \ times of operation for the proposed quarry,
  • the number and type of vehicles assumed as part of this study.

This lack of notice and lack of relevant information makes it very difficult for people to decide on whether or not to attend this event. This time of year is also very busy for both residential families with end of year school events as well as many league sporting activities and agricultural families who are very busy with field work.

FORCE will send representatives to the event and will be preparing a template list of comments that can be used to provide your feedback to St Marys. We will post that list on the website, send it out later this week via email, and have the list available for your use at the event.

The behaviour of St Marys Cement continues to be a concern. Consider the area of transportation; we have had the situation of destructive testing being done on our local roads without permits and now this failure to follow the required protocols for public consultation. St Marys claimed in its literature that it "is a caring and responsible company, and a good neighbour." We certainly don't feel that these examples represent the way a good neighbour behaves.

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