AND YET ANOTHER GRAVEL PIT

This one is not in Woolwich Township but in Wilmot west of Kitchener near Shingletown. The usual suspects are involved with Esbaugh Trucking and David Sisco of the IBI Group. Mr. Sisco has represented clients at hearings in Woolwich and likely throughout Waterloo Region and area. There is such a similarity between all these applications for new pits without any evidence apparently being required for any need much less urgent need for gravel extraction from the proposed new pit. Nor is there any market study showing that the gravel could economically be extracted from existing pits to supply current market needs and demands. I've long felt that it's simply about tying up future potentially needed gravel pits decades down the road. This is to prevent competitors from having shorter haul routes to some future imagined gravel demand nearby. That would therefore allow you to bid higher for a gravel contract knowing that your competitors couldn't undercut your prices based upon being closer to the potential new project.

Issues include noise, truck traffic, and groundwater contamination. Of course the proponents have bought and paid for studies which minimize all such possibilities. It's nothing more than a dance to benefit the privileged few at the expense of the many. Such is the result of decades of lobbying and allowing money to buy politicians and laws.

Today's Waterloo Region Record article is titled "Emotions run high as Hallman gravel pit comes to Wilmot council".