QUARRY QUANDRY IN NORTHERN CAPE BRETON
Cape Breton residents raise concerns about mining company’s plans to expand Money Point operation
Some northern Cape Breton residents are concerned a proposed quarry expansion could hurt tourism in the area.
Dexter Mining Inc. wants to increase production at a gravel quarry it currently operates on top of Money Point Mountain, near Bay St. Lawrence, to 50,000 tonnes per year until 2058.
However, Glenn Kosick, a Glace Bay native who has a summer home on Bay St. Lawrence Road, says the increased traffic on the road could deter tourists and upset the tranquility of the area.
Kosick, an engineer who has managed mining projects in more than 30 countries and is president of a Toronto-based company that provides hightech equipment for the mineral industry, said typical gravel trucks range between 15 and 25 tonnes. He said that potentially means a heavy truck rolling through the heart of the Aspy Bay area every nine to 14 minutes for the next 40 years if the quarry operates at maximum production.
“It just seems crazy to me to have gravel trucks on our Cabot Trail with that frequency,” he said, noting that communities like Aspy Bay, Saint Margaret Village, Sugar Loaf, Meat Cove, Cape North, Dingwall, Neils Harbour and Ingonish would be negatively impacted.
“It’s everything we don’t want for tourism.”
Sydney native Andrew Stevenson recently sold his financial planning companies so he can develop a long-term strategy to make the northeastern tip of the island an adventure tourism mecca, complete with hiking and mountain biking trails, year-round huts and even a nano-brewery.
He believes Europeans in particular would flock to the area to back-country ski and climb the slopes and seams of the Aspy Bay fault.
“Isn’t it about time people started to look at what God created. Instead of blasting earth and hauling out aggregate, look at the opportunity that exists there,” said Stevenson, who is selling his home in Sugar Loaf, Maine, so he can relocate to the area.
“We’ve got an opportunity to build something here. The government may be scratching their head in two, or three, or four years from now, going ‘What did we do? We’ve got a whole adventure tourism industry that’s growing, and those trucks are killing it.’”
Nova Scotia Environment Minister Iain Rankin must decide by Friday on whether to endorse this part of Dexter’s application. If it is approved, the company would need to apply for an amendment to its existing industrial approval in order to begin work on the expansion project.
While both Stevenson and Kosick said they understand the need for a quarry to maintain roads, the current volume of gravel being mined from the Money Point site is more than adequate to service that area of Victoria County.
“Nobody has an issue with that because we need to keep our roads good, and if it’s just a temporary thing and every five years you’re running gravel between Smokey and even Cheticamp, OK, but there’s no way the amount of gravel they’re applying for to pull out of there for 40 years is for the local roads,” said Kosick.