Red Bridge Road residents disappointed at lost chance to be rid of last quarry

By Craig Westcott

CBS council’s approval of a new permit for an old quarry on Red Bridge Road wasn’t surprising to longtime resident Roland Anthony, but it was still disappointing, he said.

Anthony lives at 152 Red Bridge Road. He said the delegation of residents who attended the public council meeting last week to oppose the quarry didn’t know they were not allowed to speak without making prior arrangements.

“I’ve been dealing with these quarries now for 35 years, with flooding issues and blasting and crushing, and safety issues as well,” he said. “The council keeps bringing up the fact that it (the operation) is going down from father to son… I don’t know what they’re passing down because I checked with the (Provincial government’s) quarry division and I asked if there are permits in there for quarries now, and there are no (permits for) quarries… So, I don’t know what they are passing down. There is no permit to pass down.”

Anthony was referring to the fact that Sun Construction’s quarry permit expired last May. Platinum Construction applied for the permit in late December.

Anthony said council is saying it is a one-year permit, but that is misleading because it will be as easy to renew as a driver’s licence.

“Once they’re in there, there’s no recourse,” said Anthony. “They don’t have to go (back) to the council, they don’t have to do anything else to renew.”

Anthony said he doesn’t think there has been any activity at the quarry for the past couple of years.

“When I called council at the beginning to find out who was putting the application in, it was all top secret, ‘We can’t tell you,'” Anthony said. “And then I find out it’s public knowledge, they (the Province) have a website and anybody can get this information. But the secrecy down at the council is, ‘We don’t tell anybody anything.'”

Anthony said the quarry permit covers 7.1 hectares, which he reckoned to be about the size of 18 football fields. About half of that land is not being used, because it is an empty plot that has already been depleted, he said.

Anthony said the land covered by this quarry is actually Crown Land and not privately owned and is part of a longstanding mineral lease for a much larger area that was originally held by Greenslades Construction years ago.

Anthony said there are so many other quarries in CBS, Platinum should be able to get materials without having to take it from Red Bridge Road.

The Red Bridge group was also disappointed council did not discuss the idea of rerouting heavy equipment from the quarry up through the old dirt road that once led to the Town’s former outdoor swimming pool and that emerges on Legion Road, not far from the ramps for Peacekeepers Way.

“They have an opportunity there to go up on Legion Road,” he argued. 

Anthony said he is hearing different answers as to who has first jurisdiction for issuing the quarry permit. The Province’s Mineral Lands Division tells him it is council, while council says it’s the Province, he said.

Another thing he’s discovered, Anthony said, is that the two families that own land next to the quarry, including one that keeps a farm there, were not consulted about the quarry application.

“These are questions we were going to ask down at the meeting,” said Anthony, who was also going to ask council for a stipulation against blasting. 

“Not all quarries have blasting,” he said. “A few years ago, there was this major bang and shaking of the house. At first, we thought it was an earthquake. We ran out onto the lawn and when I looked every neighbour was out on their lawns and we didn’t know what was going on. We found out two or three weeks later they had over-blasted in a quarry. We were never notified. And I had to fix the crack (in the basement concrete) myself. There was nobody to approach to find out who was responsible.”

But the biggest problem caused by the quarries that have operated in the area over the years, said Anthony, is the flooding caused by the steep slopes and scooping out of vegetation. All the development on top of Legion Road, he added, has also contributed run-off into Kelligrews River and the land on back of Red Bridge Road.

“The road cannot take the amount of water that comes down here,” Anthony said. “This is a flood plain. It’s very fragile.”

Anthony said back in the 1990s a number of basements on the street flooded out, including his own, which in his case cost $25,000 in damages and repairs. “It was service water from the quarries,” he said. “This is ongoing trouble for 35 years.”

Anthony said there has been no extra support from council over those years to address the issues. 

“This is the problem with quarries too,” said Anthony. “Nobody monitors it… Once they get in there, they do what they like. There are no penalties put in place. There are lots of rules and regulations, but there’s nobody to monitor it and there’s nobody to enforce it.”

Anthony said he feels as if the residents have no voice on council.

“I thought this was a great opportunity for the residents of Red Bridge Road to once and for all rid ourselves of the quarries and the problems that go with them – the blasting, the flooding – but council was determined to look after Platinum’s agenda.”