Uxbridge, Ontario, has an extensive history in the aggregate industry. 

There are a variety of gravel pits, quarries and other related businesses that have operated in and around the municipality for decades. And while the relationship between the businesses and the community has certainly had bumps in the proverbial road, it is by most accounts, a positive and productive partnership. To find out more about how that relationship works, Rock to Road spoke with community members, business owners and Uxbridge’s own Mayor Dave Barton.

“Aggregates are an important industry in Uxbridge, but in many ways, we’re taking one for the team,” acknowledges Barton. “Our municipality is where the gravel is, so it’s not like we chose that industry. We are in the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is the area where the glaciers left all the aggregate. So, part of living here is that it’s here, and because we’re at the north end of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), this is the only way to grow and build buildings and hospitals and roads and you need aggregate to do it.”

Barton points to an interesting aspect of the relationship between the industry and the community. There are times when local industries can find themselves in conflict with the community over issues such as land use, noise pollution or dust – and this has been the case in Uxbridge. However, often those conflicts have mitigating factors, such as that the industry is developing a product that the area benefits from or that it is the major employer in the area. Neither of those is especially true in the case of Uxbridge. Most of the gravel goes to other areas of the GTA, and, while important, the aggregate companies are not the dominant employer in the area.

Becoming part of the community

However, Mayor Barton says that the standout aggregate companies in Uxbridge have stepped up and made themselves part of the community.

“When we were building a skate park, they stepped up and provided donations of aggregate and all the materials to make that skate park even better,” says Mayor Barton. “We’re building a new hospital in our community right now, and they’re the ones who have stepped up and offered to help and made significant donations. That’s how you become a good partner.”

Barton adds really good partners also understand that having gravel trucks in the middle of the downtown core doesn’t make it an inviting place to shop. Those businesses, he says, have decided to avoid driving their trucks through the downtown area to minimize negative impacts.

“I think the businesses here do their best to genuinely accommodate the community,” says Katerina Theodorelos, chief administrative officer for Central Sand and Gravel. “Anybody that calls us about loud trucks or anything, we really do our very best to accommodate. But I think sometimes it’s hard because people own their houses, it’s their spot, and it can get loud. So, they may not totally understand all the time. I think the noise is the main thing – the traffic. We do our best, but sometimes it can get hard.”

Theodorelos’ co-worker, operations manager Lorie Andrews, says that the direct neighbours who live near their operations are ‘awesome,’ and very easy to deal with and understand the realities of their business well – after all, Central Sand and Gravel has operated in the area for almost 40 years. Andrews states that in her experience, most of the issues that have arisen have involved people who moved to Uxbridge, as opposed to those who grew up in the area.

“You take the good with the bad, and we know in the long run we’ve done everything in our power to make things right,” says Andrews.

Public education can help

VicDom Sand and Gravel also have an extensive history in the area. Assistant land manager Victor Giordano says that there will still be opposition to things that the company pursues. They have received opposition to their applications for new pits and expansions in the past, but the issues have generally been well-resolved.

“Typically, it’s a matter of educating them on what’s going on,” says Victor. “And as soon as they can wrap their head around it, they seem to come around. So, we do get opposition, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes all they need is to see the face behind the application. And sometimes, we bring people in and show them the operation, and then they can wrap their head around it, and it seems to go better that way.”

It helps to have a supportive local government, adds Victor’s father, operations manager Bruno Giordano. 

“They’re open-minded,” says Bruno. “So anytime we have a stage in our process that needs a little bit of help with licensing and permitting, they always have an open mind. We always have good dealings with them.”

Buying into the community is key 

The relationship between an industry and a local community can be based on the idea of ‘buying in.’ If a business wants the community to ‘buy in’ on their company, they need to buy into the community.

In addition to the donations to skate parks and hospitals that Mayor Barton alluded to, Andrews notes that Central Sand and Gravel have donated materials and financially to a variety of local projects, such as creating new roads to keep heavy trucks away from more populated areas. VicDom have made similar donations to projects such as the Uxbridge Pump Park and have also sponsored the local Uxbridge Bruins hockey team and made donations to the Bonner Boys charitable group.

Elizabeth Calvin, president of the Green Durham Association (GDA), cites several examples of the gravel companies contributing to support her organization’s efforts – donating gravel to help replace boardwalks that were no longer fit for purpose in a local trail system, for one.

“They bring the gravel in, and a bill just never arrives,” says Calvin. “In their scheme of things, I guess it’s small, but for us, it’s huge. To get a truckload of gravel is a big thing.”

Calvin notes that it’s not always sunny in the relationship between the aggregate companies and the community or groups like the GDA. They have fought back on issues that they believe conflict with their vision for trails in the area. But even if they wanted to, they can’t fight against all the projects.

“We’re in gravel pit country, and it’s a fact of life,” says Calvin. “But if there’s a relationship, you can really help their projects and reduce community pushback. Sometimes the community is right to push back, but if there’s a relationship, I think things can be resolved.”

An interesting ongoing project in the area that could also help bolster community relations is reclaiming pits that have reached the end of their life and rehabilitating them into parkland or other uses. 

Ralph Toninger, associate director of restoration and resource management with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, says that one such reclamation project has been achieved in Uxbridge so far, with others planned for the future. Toninger notes that these are extensive projects with difficult logistics – it can take up to 400,000 truckloads of material to fill the pits before you even get into the complexities surrounding hydrology and tree planting on the sites. There are also opportunities to profit from filling a pit with material such as topsoil, though redeveloping on top of that is less than ideal.

“Uxbridge are redeveloping and developing new subdivisions, and there’s an excess of top soil or fill material in the municipality,” says Toninger. “Getting rid of topsoil has become quite costly, and filling pits is a very simple way of getting rid of excess topsoil and fill material. And you can charge a tipping fee per load, and the individual pit owner can generate significant revenue. It’s a perfect scenario. You run a pit, you get paid to take all the gravel out, and then you get paid to fill it back in again.”