Giant hole in escarpment to be masked with trees, not filled in

The infamous Dufferin Gap, blasted through the face of the Niagara Escarpment for gravel trucks in 1962, is destined to remain as a giant monument to environmental degradation.

The Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) wants the scar north of Milton erased, but says it lacks the power to demand Dufferin Aggregates fill in the notch that’s so visible from Highway 401 that it’s credited with prompting passage of the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act in 1973.

The four-storey slot was cut to let trucks in and out of Dufferin’s Milton quarry on Dublin Line, north of the 401. It’s spanned by a steel bridge that carries the Bruce Trail along the escarpment edge. Kelso Conservation Area is on the south side of the 401 to the west.

When the provincial cabinet allowed the quarry to expand in 2006, it ordered the company to submit a plan to the NEC to “fill in and screen” the cut.

However, Dufferin, a division of Holcim (Canada) Inc., proposes only to plant trees and provide some screening. The NEC says that’s not good enough, but it can’t do anything because the cabinet decision simply required Dufferin to submit a plan by a specified date, not a plan acceptable to the commission.

In a letter to the clerk of cabinet, NEC chairperson Don Scott said the commission considers the process at an end because “it was in no position to do anything else, given that the licence for the Dufferin Milton quarry extension has already been issued …”

Commission member Joan Little, a former member of Burlington city council, calls the situation ludicrous.

“There’s no mechanism to get them to fill it in. There’s no teeth to anything.”

Conservative Halton MPP Ted Chudleigh said he isn’t upset at all.

“The commission wanted the gap filled in completely, but that’s unreasonable in my opinion, in terms of future use and outright expense.”

He said tree planting and grading have already reduced the gap’s visibility, and the road will be needed to access a lake and green space that will replace the quarry after it closes in an estimated eight to 15 years.

Calling the gap “one of the strongest reasons for the NEC to exist,” he says, “you could put a sign on it saying the NEC was founded here.”

Andrea Bourrie, speaking for Holcim, said the majority of members of an advisory committee set up in 2007 agreed with the plan to plant trees in front of the gap and near its top, as well as to later realign the roadway to narrow the gap.

“That conclusion was shared by everybody but the NEC,” Bourrie said.