Why is someone drilling in my backyard?

Comment: People all over Virginia need to wake up and smell the coffee. If Virginia allows uranium mining and milling it well affect your mineral rights; therefore, we will see Drilling Rigs pulling up in your yard. Virginia is known to listen to Corporations and not her people! So demand Virginia to ban uranium mining and milling NOW!!!

June 06, 2009
Peter Gorrie

The province claims it made peace with residents of cottage country when it made private property in Southern Ontario off-limits to prospectors.

Its new policy, announced this spring, "takes bold steps toward a modern, innovative Mining Act that would balance all of our respective interests, benefit Ontario communities and support a vibrant Ontario minerals industry," says mines minister Michael Gravelle.

But "nobody is happy," says Robin Simpson, a leader in the battle to stop uranium mining in Haliburton County, a couple of hours northeast of Toronto. "We were used so the minister could say there were proper consultations. They obviously weren't listening at all."

Many cottagers and full-time residents of Haliburton and, further east, Frontenac, are up in arms over companies trying to take advantage of renewed interest in nuclear power by reviving uranium mines that briefly operated a few decades ago.

Ontario's Mining Act lets prospectors stake claims, without seeking permission, on government Crown land and on private properties where the owners don't control the rights to minerals under the surface.

Claim holders are then free to conduct drilling and other exploration work, which usually entails bulldozing or blasting. It's illegal to attempt to stop them.

The property owners, including many cottagers from the GTA, along with aboriginal groups in Frontenac, have campaigned effectively against potential mining developments.

For First Nations, the issue is treaty rights: Prospecting and exploration are happening on land they claim. Non-natives are concerned about their property rights, and the prospect of radioactive air and water pollution, as well as noise, from mines on Crown land near their homes and cottages.

The province announced recently aboriginal communities are to be consulted before further mining activity, and prospectors can no longer claim private land anywhere in southern Ontario. (There are also new measures for the Far North, equally flawed, which I'll write about in a future column.)

But aboriginal leaders complain the province could still impose mining on their traditional lands. And Simpson points out the new policy does nothing about mining on Crown land, viewed as the biggest threat to an area aiming to create a tourism economy.

On top of that, the province will still hold the mineral rights under private properties, and reserves the power to eventually allow mining on them.

"It's the same old, same old ... a big bloody sham," says Simpson, whose land has been partially staked for uranium exploration.

"It's a crock," says Steve Quebell, sawmill worker who lives with his wife and teenage daughter on 33 hectares of forested land in Haliburton that's been claimed by a company planning to mine nepheline, a relatively rare mineral used in glass and paint.

The ministry is backing the claim, despite evidence, says Quebell, that it wasn't staked properly and that holes were drilled too close to a stream. The exploration crew bulldozed 500 square metres of trees and soil for one of the six holes it drilled.

On the larger front, having seen their original demands ignored, the cottage-country residents will now campaign for a prohibition against any mining on Crown land in southern Ontario.

Their efforts include pressuring members of the Legislature, many of them Liberals, who represent cottagers' home ridings.

Mining in southern Ontario accounts for only one per cent of the industry's spending in the province. The companies involved are minor players, and most of their projects will amount to nothing.

As staking and exploration expand in prime vacation areas (there's also been activity in the Parry Sound area), the government appears to be creating a lot of trouble for itself for little benefit.

Peter Gorrie is the Star's former environment reporter. He can be reached at: pgorrie@sympatico.ca

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/645838