Digging deep

Ridge Road sand pit rezoning deferred

An application to see prime agriculture land turned over to an aggregate designation has been deferred.

Paul and Sandi Greer own and operate Paul Greer and Sons Excavating, as well as Greenridge Asparagus Farm on Ridge Road. The Greers are proposing to redesignate the lands on Ridge Road from the prime agricultural designation to an aggregate designation in order to permit a Class “B” pit. The operation would be permitted to annually extract a maximum of 20,000 tonnes of sand and gravel materials lying only above the water table.

The land on Ridge Road is currently used and operated as an asparagus farm that utilizes the majority of the property. An asparagus processing facility has been recently constructed on the farm and a large number of new asparagus crowns have been planted.

Paul Greer believes there is a strong need for sand materials in Prince Edward County due to the general lack of such resources locally. “Our excavation business mainly looks after new home residential construction. We are in need of the material for our housing projects we work at,” says Greer. Currently, Greer has to travel to areas north of Belleville or Quinte West. “It is not a secret, there is a shortage of sand in Prince Edward County,” says Greer. “We keep driving further and further to get our material.”

Greer cites a recent project in Prinyer’s Cove. The material he needed had to be picked up in Stirling, which took two trucks, driving for 12 hours, for a total of 1,069.2 kilometres. If the sand would have been attained from the Ridge Road pit, the round trip would have been only 415.2 kilometres.

“We aren’t just running a few extra kilometres for this. It’s hundreds of kilometres,” says Greer. “We burnt 495 litres of fuel to get that material to Prinyer’s Cove. The end consumer pays a lot more money for what we are doing.”

The pit operations would first involve removal of material that will be used to construct a berm intended to function as a visual and noise barrier and later re-used to rehabilitate the pit with appropriate soils for agriculture. The pit is planned for staged development in a series of three progressions, beginning with the existing pit face that will then advance in a general northeast direction. As each stage is complete, it will be rehabilitated with the previously stored overburden materials and then replanted with asparagus or other agricultural plantings. The project would cover 38.3 acres of the 73.3 acre farm.

Basically, Greer wants to work the land, sliver by sliver, removing the sand from beneath the soil, and then rehabilitating the land, returning it to prime agriculture, to be planted with more asparagus.

County homebuilder Peter Sage spoke to the need for a pit. “We need to have resources in order to build our community,” said Sage. “In order to build houses for all the people coming here, we need the sand that his quarry will produce. There’s a lot of job creation associated with the building industry in this County. I employ 20 people, but I need 10 more,” said Sage.

Joanne Tammel, lives on Shannon Road, and is Vice-President of The Waring’s Creek Improvement Association. She worries about the effects on the movement of water in the area. “In my hand, I have a study that we commissioned almost 20 years ago, regarding an old aggregate application. This study is done by Paul Bowen, a highly respected hydrogeologist of Terraprobe. It was relevant 20 years ago, it’s relevant today and it will be relevant 20 years from now, because it pertains to eskers, water movement, the removal of aggregate and sand off of eskers and how that affects the movement of water,” said Tammel.

Tammel wanted to be clear that just because Greer plans to not go below the water table, doesn’t mean it won’t disturb the water table. “This isn’t about going below the water table. This is about shallow, perched water systems within the esker. This is water that is in the sand and gravel. It is a sponge. It absorbs the rain and the snow. It sits in there then slowly, in drought and regular periods, trickles off into our creek, wells, watershed and water system,” said Tammel.

“You allow the removal of this sponge and instead it’s hitting clay and evaporating. It is so important to keep the aggregate in the sand there,” said Tammel.

Mayor Steve Ferguson put forth a motion to defer the file. “Given the amount of public interest in this application, I’d like to put forward a motion to defer decision about this,” said Ferguson.

Councillor Jamie Forrester agreed that the rezoning needed some more time to be thought over. “There were a lot of questions asked and I’d like the sponging of Waring’s Creek addressed,” he said.

The motion to defer carried. The file is expected to return to a planning committee meeting later this fall.