Nelson Aggregates' current pit on Burlington's Mt. Nemo is the size of 409 football fields. In a statement posted on Nelson's website, they write that "Independent studies" conclude that their application to blast an additional 124 acres (another 93 football fields!) from Burlington's Greenbelt and Escarpment lands would "have no adverse environmental impact."
CORE Burlington begs to differ.
Canada's leading ecologist, Mr. Gord Miller, says the integrity of Mt. Nemo is threatened by the quarry proposal.
Art for the Jeffs
DID YOU KNOW...
that Burlington's Mount Nemo is one of the last scraps of safe habitat left in Canada where the endangered Jefferson Salamander is able to survive?
CORE Burlington is pleased to announce that artist, Sherry Hayes, is donating a portion of her proceeds from the sale of reprints of her original acrylic painting, 'Within the Darkened Forest' to us, and to our mentor organization, PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land). Monies raised from the sale of Sherry's prints (and lovely notecards) will assist CORE Burlington and PERL in continuing our scientific quests to better understand the sensitive habitats of Mount Nemo that support the endangered Jefferson Salamander.
Here's Sherry's painting: 'Within the Darkened Forest'.
The scene is set deep within a Carolinian forest on Mount Nemo. Can you spot the Jefferson Salamander? They're extremely elusive in real life. If you ever find one while wandering in the old-growth forests of Mount Nemo, consider yourself lucky!
And please...also consider helping us to help the Jeffs by ordering reprints and/or notecards of 'Within the Darkened Forest'!
We thank you. And the Jeffs thank you, too.
Prints Are Available In Three Sizes:
18" x 24" Giclee Print, Numbered, Limited Edition (50 only), signed, unframed: $387
16" x 20" Giclee Print, not numbered, unsigned, unframed: $278
11" x 14" Giclee Print, not numbered, unsigned, unframed: $155
Notecards Are Available in Packs of Five:
Five different images per pack, blank inside:
$45 for 1 pack of 5; $80 for 2 packs
About Us
We are a non-profit organization of volunteers opposed to an application from Nelson Aggregate to blast an additional 124 acres into two open-pit limestone mines on Mt. Nemo in Burlington's UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve on the Niagara Escarpment.
Our Mission
To preserve the ecological integrity of rural Burlington, and to advocate for healthier communities by protecting our land, air and water.
Once It's Gone, It's Gone
Protect Your Piece of the Planet:
You may not be able to save our whole Earth, but you can protect the part of the world that is closest to you.
Watch drone footage of a huge dust cloud settling over a neighbour's home after a weekly blast by Nelson Aggregates in its below-the-water table, open-pit gravel mine on the Mount Nemo plateau, part of an UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in Burlington, Ont.
We are THRILLED to announce that CORE Burlington has partnered with the Small Change Fund. The Small Change Fund, founded in 2008, works with its community partners to raise funds in support of important environmental issues.
Small Change Fund believes in people. They believe that people know how to fix the problems in their communities, their cities, and their country. They believe people can make change without long studies, thick reports, and big money.
Small Change Fund is...
people helping each other by crowdsourcing big change.
All your donations will go towards hiring a team of specialists that will help CORE Burlington demonstrate the environmental, cultural, economic, and social impacts that further open-pit mining will have on our community. In addition, thanks to Small Change Fund, all donations receive a tax receipt for your records.
DONATE HERE:
Did You Know?
There are 22 licensed quarries in Halton Region alone, covering an area of 3810 acres, producing an average of 7.1 million metric tonnes of aggregate per year.
Halton Region (which includes Burlington) is one of the highest aggregate producers in Ontario.
After 70 long years of open-pit mining on Mt. Nemo in rural Burlington, Nelson Aggregate (in addition to applying for two new quarries) has stated that they plan to continue operations in the existing quarry for 50 more years!
"We have a park. It’s called the Niagara Escarpment and it’s pretty perfect."
Comment posted on CORE Burlington's Facebook Page by Nancy Louise
Quinn DelGado
Hardly a Fair Trade from the 'People-for-Rocks'
Nelson Aggregate is offering the citizens of Burlington a trade. Let them blow-up an additional 124 acres of prime Niagara Escarpment green-lands and they'll give the city a pretty park. Sometime in the far-away future.
Question: Isn't Nelson Aggregate ALREADY obligated to rehabilitate their existing 500 acre hole in the escarpment...leave it to fill in and form a lake? We don’t need to give Nelson Aggregate an additional 124 acres of our precious green-space in order to receive the 'gift' of a far-off future park.
An exhausted pit is of no value to an aggregate company, and carries significant costs and liabilities. After exploiting tens of millions of dollars from the destruction of the local landscape, giving the community an abandoned pit is no gift: rather, society gifted Nelson Aggregate the right to extract the mineral resource in the first place. Are we going to give Nelson another 50 years in return for a park?
Here's the City of Burlington's response to Nelson's park-punt.
"Recently, there has been an effort on the part of the Nelson Quarry proponent to frame its quarry application as a gift of a park to the city, contingent on approval of a new multi-decade mining operation on the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve."
Read more...
When will Burlington get
its long-promised lake?
Don't be distracted by the promises of parks-for-people from people-for-rocks.
No 'new' park is worth 124 acres of permanently obliterated escarpment lands.
Steve Lindstrom, Duluth Tribune: Nov, 2013
If Nelson intended to create a park for the community, wouldn’t they have done so already with a portion of the existing quarry that is no longer in use? It seems 'convenient' that their offer to donate the exhausted quarry-land for a park is conditional upon approval of their current application to blast two new pits down the road from the current one.
Once it's gone, it's gone forever
The "lunar" landscape of the current Nelson Aggregate pit on Burlington's Mt. Nemo Escarpment:
a deceased place, eco-carrion.
"What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?"
T.S. Eliot - The Wasteland
Open-pit mining companies make promises of ‘rehabilitating’ the land, but no man-made rehabilitation can replicate the complexity of a bio-diverse ecosystem that has been blasted to its rocky core.
Please marvel at this life-thriving marshland off Cedar Springs Road on Burlington's Escarpment: less than 3kms down the road from Nelson Aggregate's currently proposed new west pit site. Complex ecosystems such as this one can NEVER be replaced. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Did you know?
There are 22 licensed quarries in Halton Region alone, covering an area of 3810 acres, producing an average of 7.1 million metric tonnes of aggregate per year. Halton Region (which includes Burlington) is one of the highest aggregate producers in Ontario.
After 70 long years of open-pit mining on Mt. Nemo in rural Burlington, Nelson Aggregate (in addition to applying for two new quarries ) has stated that they plan to continue operations in the existing quarry for 50 more years! When will Burlington get its long-promised lake?
Our Objectives
1. Oppose new aggregate mineral extraction, and processing of off-site aggregates, and asphalt reprocessing on Burlington escarpment lands.
2. STOP the importation of any fill into Nelson Aggregate's below-the-water-table Mt. Nemo open-pit quarry mine.
3. Protect the environmentally sensitive biodiversity of the Burlington escarpment woodlands, wetlands, water courses and prime agricultural lands, consistent with our UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve designation.
4. Advocate on behalf of all living organisms, particularly species-at-risk
This tract of prime farmland on Burlington's escarpment, is on it's way out...
5. Protect and improve the quality of our air, and the quality and supply of our water.
6. Address concerns associated with HEAVY truck traffic including noise, vibration, pollution, community safety, and road infrastructure
7. Advocate for a comprehensive, science-based assessment of all potential negative impacts, including cumulative impacts, of more aggregate extraction on the Burlington escarpment.
8. Champion our rural community's quality-of-life, and the safe and peaceful enjoyment of our homes and farms for our families and future generations.
"When no one is left to mourn,
when we are sure that the butternut trees have gone
and only the dust rises from the north bluff;
when we cannot go back to our promises
because we have lost what is there to save,
and there is nothing left to take,
the price of the limestone will be nothing
compared to the cost of our mistakes."
(Comment from JART Report: Nelson Aggregate Co. Burlington Quarry. 2009. Pg 23)
