Of Rape and Rehabilitation

By Peter Mitchell

When it comes to throwing stones at environmental sinners, quarries make an easy target. On the surface they rape the countryside, displace local wildlife and leave a gaping wound in the earth in their quest to supply the materials we demand for our roads and buildings. You can’t be less eco-friendly than that.

But dig a little deeper and you will find that quarries actually take their environmental responsibility seriously and, like the rest of us, do their part to try and make the world a greener place. Burlington based Nelson Aggregate Co, has supplied the limestone for many local landmarks. It has been used in concrete for the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre, and the Skyway Bridge. Yet they are also working with a number of partners to provide the building blocks that allow us to heal the wounds our demands have created.

“When it comes to the environment it has to be a partnership between various organizations,” says Norm Elmhirst, president of Nelson.

He cites their most recent endeavour that saw the company working hand in hand with the Bruce Trail Association to allow hikers safe access across the company’s land. Nelson’s north perimeter runs along Colling Road, a shoulderless concession road with a lot of traffic. Their fence along the boundary was deteriorating and badly needed repair.

“We started looking at it,” he explains. “And we thought if we were able to replace the existing fence with a new fence situated further away from the road, it would give hikers a safer route less traveled by traffic. We started talking with the Bruce Trail folks right away to see if they were interested, and they thought it was a perfect idea. Our target was to have it available for the summer hiking season.”

It was a team effort from the start. After permission was granted from the Ministry of Natural Resources to move the licensed boundary, the kilometer and a half long fence was erected last fall at a cost of approximately $16,000. The Bruce Trail Association provided everything else.

“Theirs was mainly the sweat and labour that went into it. They leveled the path and created mini-retaining walls out of logs to make the path walk-able. They constructed an A-frame ladder to cross over the fence at one end; and a bridge at the other end to block access from snowmobiles and ATV’s. They put a fair bit of work into it.”

This isn’t the first time Nelson has donated land and materials to its surrounding communities. In 2003 they donated 23 hectares of land to the Grand River Conservation Authority, a year before clearing its adjacent aggregate pit to sell for industrial development. The area, which includes 800 meters along the east bank of the Grand River, is now the focus of study on recreational use and fish habitat under the provincial “Exceptional Waters” program for its combination of natural features and quality of natural habitat.

Nelson has also worked with the City of Burlington to restore their abandoned quarry in Kerncliffe Park; the type of used and abused landscape that environmentalists like to wag their fingers at. Swallows now call the cliff faces home, and the area has become a natural habitat for many varieties of foliage including nine rare plant species that are rare to the area. In 2005, the City of Burlington received the Bronze Plague Award from the Aggregate Producers Association of Ontario for the exemplary rehabilitation efforts provided at Kerncliffe.

“We were pleased to participate in that with the city,” Elmhirst says. “And it’s amazing how much quarries kind of self-rehabilitate. Nature adapts to its environment. It’s a different type of environment than you normally see around here, but I guess nature finds a way to make it work.”

Nelson has been engaged in recycling and rehabilitation programs for two decades, long before it became the cause du jour, and has put every effort into supplying recycled aggregate to the market. The material comes from local streets and buildings, and the finished product is used for granular type applications like roads, driveways and other municipal work that doesn’t require high-quality material. The process is a major undertaking.

“We bring it in and sort the bricks, blocks and reinforced concrete into separate piles. When we crush it we extract all the reinforcing steel and that is piled separately to eventually be melted down again. However, they can’t be used totally on their own. You need to mix virgin aggregate with it to make it a usable product. For most specifications you can only put about 25 per cent of recycled material into an aggregate product. Seventy five percent has to be new aggregate to produce a usable product. One of the benefits of having the limestone right here on the site gives us the ability to recycle those materials. We’ve recycled probably hundreds of thousands of tons that would otherwise have gone into landfills.”

Sadly, for all the people willing to put the time and effort into help clean the landscape, it seems an equal number are content to continue using it as their personal garbage dump. People may pat themselves on the back for tossing their cans, bottles and newspapers into a blue bin, but when the process requires a bit of extra labour their green aspirations seem to go out the window. This fact that became evidently clear when Nelson’s employees participated in this year’s Earth Day Clean-Up on April 21^st.

“People throw away tires, batteries and a lot of heavier items. It’s amazing the kind of stuff you find out there in the ditches,” Elmhirst explains. “We had 41 employees and family members collect all the garbage from the area and we disposed of it ourselves.”

Before disposing of it however, they weighed it, and discovered they had gathered an astonishing two and a half tonnes of garbage. It serves as a grim reminder that before we point to businesses and demand they clean up their act, we need to make sure we’ve cleaned up our own. Let he who is without sin….

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Biz Hamilton is published by Town Media Inc.