Rehabilitating Ontario's Pits & Quarries

Urban Sprawl: Highways & Houses

Cheap gravel, with a mininal haulage levy, and Ontario government policy encouraging expoitation of aggregates, translates into lots of highways and lots of house construction, which translates into urban sprawl. We are excavating our farms and our woods, and using the excavated gravel to pave more farms and woods. As Joni Mitchell sings in Big Yellow Taxi, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Each year, Ontario uses about 1,500,000 tonnes of aggregates.

Highways to new suburbs (the 401 basketweave is shown here). The majority of aggregates are used by the government, and most of these go into roads. According to Aggregate Producers of Ontario, each kilometer of four-lane road uses about 13,500 tonnes of aggregate.

Fields and hills turned into urban sprawl. According to APAO, a new brick house uses about 440 tonnes of aggregate.