Between a rock and a hard place
Times are tough in Northern Ontario. But is blasting the Lake
Superior shoreline to produce gravel for Michigan highways really the
answer?
Conor Mihell, A Globe and Mail Special Report
February 16, 2008
Wawa, Ont. - Randy Klockars fondly remembers the camaraderie of long
winter nights when neighbours came together and celebrated the
hardscrabble life they shared "on the Bay."
At his beachfront home on Lake Superior's Michipicoten Bay, near
Wawa, Ont., friends would gather over potluck dinners to complain of
overflowing septic tanks and epic snowfalls while food simmered on
the woodstove and someone stoked the sauna. Toward midnight, crazed
souls would escape the intense heat indoors and charge across the
snow-covered beach for a quick dip in the lake.
It has been a few years now since Mr. Klockars, a high-school
teacher, and his wife and six children have held such a party. With
layoffs and shutdowns at area lumber mills, pickings have been slim
for Wawa, a community of 3,500 just off the Trans-Canada Highway
between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. What's more, a proposed
quarry and processing facility has opened a rift between those for
and against an American company's promise of jobs that comes with
potential environmental risks.
Superior Aggregates Company (SAC), a subsidiary of the Michigan-based
highway-building giant Carlo Companies, is poised to start clearing
vegetation on a 386-hectare site to within 60 metres of the Lake
Superior shoreline in order to blast the underlying,
2.5-billion-year-old rock into high-grade gravel.
Poised to begin
The land was formerly owned by Algoma Steel, which shipped iron ore
mined near Wawa to its mill in Sault Ste. Marie by freighter. In
1999, a year after Algoma ceased operations in Wawa, SAC purchased
the property for $725,000 (U.S.). It contains trap rock, which is far
more valuable to road builders than the typical crushed limestone
aggregates from the Niagara Escarpment. Furthermore, the company
could cut costs significantly by shipping the aggregate from an
existing 455-metre-long wharf.
After waiting almost a decade for proper approvals, SAC could begin
operations as early as next year, says project manager Harold Cheley,
of DST Consulting Engineers, the company that has been contracted to
develop the quarry.
SAC will remove up to 23,000 tonnes of material a week, he says, and
provide permanent seasonal jobs to about a dozen people during the
first phase of operation, which will last five to 10 years. Profits
generated during this phase will be used to upgrade the wharf and
research the feasibility of expanding operations, Mr. Cheley says.
Wawa resident Richard Watson has been outspoken in his support for
the quarry. "It's really frustrating when there's a great opportunity
here for a town that's hurting," he says. "I wonder how many millions
of dollars in taxes have we lost already because of a few people who
know how government works and have caused delays."
In 2004, SAC applied to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to
develop a quarry, but it was determined that the groundwater
elevation was closer to the surface than was previously thought. SAC
then reapplied for a permit to quarry beneath the water table.
Now, "the concerns of government agencies have been dealt with and
we're responding to objections from the public," Mr. Cheley says.
"The community needs something energetic and new to start up," he
adds. "I'd say 98 per cent of the population supports it."
Joel Cooper, a member of the Citizens Concerned for Michipicoten Bay,
a group of full-time and seasonal residents who have been "caring for
the coast" since 2002, would beg to differ.
"We may be in the minority," Mr. Cooper says, "but we're the ones
looking out for the best interest of Lake Superior."
Among those supporting the group's position are environmental
advocacy organizations such as Gravel Watch Ontario, Environmental
Defence Canada and Freshwater Future, based in Michigan, he says.
Mr. Cooper's humble year-round home of 25 years looks out across
Michipicoten Bay. It is separated from SAC's property by two
kilometres of Canadian Shield and the boreal forest immortalized by
Group of Seven painter A.Y. Jackson, who once kept a summer cabin
next door.
A 'foot in the door'
All his group wants, he says, is to ensure that the area's clean
water and air continue to provide habitat for fish and wildlife, and
remain attractive to residents and tourists alike. The noise of pit
quarrying, the risk of water contamination due to dust and leaching,
and the visual impact of stripping the land and blasting the rock do
not fit the group's vision.
Of most concern is the fact that, under existing legislation, SAC
will need to assess the potential environmental effects only on the
10 per cent of its land that it has applied for a licence to quarry.
Yet if it plans to be in operation over the long haul, Mr. Cooper
says, it will have to apply to expand its area of operations within
five years.
"It's a 'foot-in-the-door' strategy where the hope is future
approvals won't come with the same degree of scrutiny," he says.
"We'd rather examine the long-term, cumulative impacts now, rather
than in phases over the next 50 years."
In 2004, Mr. Cooper's group presented the Ontario Ministry of the
Environment with 4,600 letters of support for an inspection under the
provincial Environmental Assessment Act. Instead, the province
extended the jurisdiction of the Aggregate Resources Act, which is
managed by the Natural Resources Ministry and until then had
encompassed only Southern Ontario; the act now includes the
development at Michipicoten, but it is fundamentally different from
the Environmental Assessment Act.
Brian Messerschmidt, manager of the Natural Resources Ministry's
aggregate and petroleum resources section, says that to acquire a
licence to quarry under the act, an applicant must provide a site
plan and documents outlining land use, the type and amount of
aggregate to be removed and rehabilitation plans, as well as
technical reports dealing with environmental, cultural and
hydrological considerations. These materials are then assessed by
municipal, provincial and federal agencies. The applicant is also
required to notify and consult the public and attempt to mediate any
objections - the current stage of the SAC application.
"The act is sound, but it presumes that the MNR has exclusive control
when other laws such as the Environmental Protection Act should apply
as well," says Ric Holt of Gravel Watch Ontario. "The rules might
make sense in some contexts, but it's not at all clear that they
apply on the north shore of Lake Superior."
Mr. Cooper says the applicant-driven Aggregate Resources Act "isn't
the appropriate piece of legislation" because it facilitates SAC's
piecemeal approach to developing its property and is too narrow in
its environmental scope. "They're only required to look at impacts
within 120 metres of the proposed site," he says. "But the impact is
going to go well beyond 120 metres, especially on Lake Superior."
Of greater environmental consequence is the fact that the proposed
Wawa quarry could compromise the entire north shore of Lake Superior,
says Brian Christie, executive director of the Lake Superior
Conservancy and Watershed Council, a non-profit environmental
advocacy group based in Sault Ste. Marie.
Michipicoten Bay sits in the middle of more than 300 kilometres of
wilderness comprising the world's longest stretch of undeveloped
freshwater coast. The area's lichen-draped forest and 200-metre-tall
cliffs provide refuge for rare wildlife such as woodland caribou and
peregrine falcons; plants commonly found in the Arctic attest to Lake
Superior's glacially cold water. Many consider the lake water clean
enough to drink straight from the source.
Conflicting visions
But according to Mr. Christie, the province seems more interested in
building quarries than protecting the area.
And the looming SAC development could open the door for more. In
2001, the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines commissioned a
study that identified 15 other potential quarry sites on Lake
Superior's north shore - including six bordering the newly designated
Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area.
Since this federal marine park protects little of the shoreline, Mr.
Christie says, smaller quarries could be developed to feed a large
processing facility at Michipicoten, 250 kilometres to the south.
He says that hawking the area to prospectors hardly jibes with the
province's pledges to revive the Northern economy with tourism and
promote the area as a world-class destination with already
"bought-and-paid-for" initiatives such as the Great Lakes Heritage
Coast.
That plan, which was drawn up in 1999 by the former Progressive
Conservative government, was supposed to bring wilderness-seeking
tourists and a management strategy to the north shore, not encourage
an aggregate-producing stronghold, Mr. Christie says.
"The Heritage Coast would've been well established by now," he says.
"But for whatever reason the Liberals deep-sixed it. We're trying to
encourage them to reopen the file and get on with it."
The situation at Michipicoten Bay resembles the standoff at Digby
Neck, N.S., in 2002, when a New Jersey-based road-building
conglomerate proposed a quarry of similar proportions on the shore of
the North Atlantic. That bid was snuffed out in November by the
provincial Department of Environment and Labour because of
"unacceptable risks to the environment and communities."
Desperate for jobs
In Nova Scotia, worry about the proposed quarry's threats to
fisheries and a burgeoning tourism industry outweighed the promise of
20-odd jobs.
But in Wawa, even a dozen new jobs from SAC is helpful after more
than 130 full-time workers were left without employment in December
when Weyerhaeuser - another company with stateside head offices -
permanently closed the local pressboard mill. Those layoffs - along
with hundreds of others in the region's forest sector - were blamed
on the stagnant American housing market, strong Canadian dollar and
high energy costs.
Wawa's population is dwindling as fast as its jobless rate skyrockets.
Ryan Lamming is one local who will not be around for long. After
losing his job with Weyerhaeuser, Mr. Lamming, 29, promptly pulled up
his lifelong stakes in the area and by next week will be living in
Dawson Creek, B.C., where he plans to make ends meet as a tradesman,
with the eventual goal of becoming an officer with the RCMP.
He says he will let time decide whether he is for or against the
proposed quarry. "The area needs something, especially now," he says.
"But I'm 100 per cent against anything that will make a massacre of
the shoreline."
Quarry or no quarry, Randy Klockars says he will continue to fire up
the sauna on Saturday nights at his home on Michipicoten Bay. The
parties might not be as boisterous as they once were, but everyone is
invited to enjoy the sounds of the lake.
Conor Mihell is a writer based in Wawa, Ontario.
Editors Note: For more information about this contraversial proposed development visit the