The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Pa ge 1 0 T hu rs da y, S ep te m be r 2 4, 2 01 5 - T he IF P - H al to n H ill s - w w w .th ei fp .c a NEWS By Melanie Hennessey Special to The IFP Town staff is keeping a close eye on another quarry proposal, this time in the Town of Erin. Halton Hills Council received a staff memo at its meeting last week advising them of plans from CBM Aggregates to cre- ate a 250-acre gravel pit on Trafalgar Rd., just south of Hillsburgh. Mayor Rick Bonnette thanked Ward 4 Councillor Ann Lawlor for bringing the ap- plication to staff's attention. "When you look at the size of this, it's two-and-a-half times larger than the Hid- den Quarry," he said. "Our concern would naturally be the haul routes." He went on to joke that the Town is "al- most playing Whack-a-Mole" with all of the quarry applications coming forward. Staff plans to report back to council at a future meeting on the status of the applica- tion and any potential implications for the Town of Halton Hills. At next week's meeting, council is ex- pected to receive a staff report with an up- date on the Hidden Quarry proposal from James Dick Construction Ltd. for nearby Rockwood. On an aggregate-related note, Bonnette is seeking a meeting with the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) to discuss the impact of aggregate extraction activities and increasing truck traffic on the community. The mayor told his colleagues of his plans at last week's council session, where mem- bers also received a letter from Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Glen Murray, on the topic. Bonnette had previously written to Mur- ray requesting a meeting, but the minister's letter indicates that the mayor should in- stead speak with the MNRF as it has primary regulatory oversight for aggregate opera- tions. The mayor said he's taking this advice. "We've been trying to be visionaries, try- ing to say we're not against quarries, but you have to have a plan to get from point A to point B in our community in a safe manner," he said. Town keeping close eye on quarry development