St Marys Innoculation

Roll up your sleeves;
it's time to vaccinate against the St Marys Cement Virus

Viruses are tiny things that change form readily and, when given a chance to establish, can create havoc. St Marys Cement's communications and public relations activities are much like that. They look harmless, after all the words inside their pamphlets offer sweeping promises and comforting assurances. Unfortunately it could all be a public relations tactic, one that is meant to disarm us, break down our defenses and make our Community susceptible to infection with the St Marys Cement Virus. But we're not going to let that happen. Why? Because knowledge is a powerful weapon and we can use it to "vaccinate" every resident in our Community against the St Marys Cement Virus.

The biggest risk we now face with St Marys Cement backing the proposed Flamborough Quarry, just north of Carlisle, is their ability to win over our Community. It's not the facts that they can play with, because the facts have always been in our favour. It's our minds and our hearts. They can try to scare us with their corporate size; they can try to overwhelm us with corporate rhetoric; and they can even try to buy our affection.

But the facts are with us.

St Marys Cement is proposing to develop the 8th largest quarry in Canada in the middle of our established rural residential and agricultural community. We were right to be outraged when this proposal to operate an open pit industrial mine was first announced, and it is our responsibility to remain outraged. It does not matter how smooth the proponent is, nor does it matter how the company name evokes images of an old Ontario town. Their goal is to make a profit by blasting a natural heritage site into a moonscape and ship out the stone. It's all about money. There is nothing neighbourly about that!

There are a range of tactics that St Marys Cement may employ over the next few weeks, months, and years. We need to see them for what they are. They are a means to defeat us in our battle against their unwelcome and unreasonable intrusion into our Community. If we know what to anticipate we can be ready to resist. In other words we can vaccinate ourselves against the St Marys Cement Virus.

Watch for these attempts to disarm us:

• St Marys Cement may underplay the company's foreign ownership and overplay its experience:
  
  
  • Pamphlets circulated in the Community make no reference to the fact that St Marys is wholly owned by Votorantim, a private Brazilian conglomerate with 2005 net revenues of approximately $10 billion Canadian dollars. They do not reference the fact that it was the Brazilian head office that approved the purchase of the site, nor do they explain that it will likely be the Brazilian Head Office that will ultimately make the decisions about how the site is operated.
  • Neither pamphlets, nor their web-site mention that it has been decades, as we understand it, since St Marys Cement has opened a new greenfield quarry. It is likely that none of their personnel will have experience with the challenges of introducing an environmentally intrusive industrial operation in the middle of a rural residential Community.
    
    
• Their media campaign will likely be professional, friendly and relentless. Expect to see them in all the local newspapers in various forms:
  
  
  • Advertisements with the St Marys Cement name and logo accompanied by photographs of tranquil settings.
  • Pictures of St Marys' representatives surrounded by local and provincial politicians and officials.
  • Advertisements commissioned by the Ontario Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (OSSGA) the aggregate industry trade group, touting the importance of the industry and their members' focus on the environment.
    
    

Watch for these attempts to charm us:

• They may position themselves as a local "Made in Canada" organization with years of experience:
  
  
  • Expect rhetoric about responsible industry leadership, with a local heritage and world-wide expertise.
  • Expect commentary emphasizing Environmental Stewardship profiling the wetlands near their property in Bowmanville.
    
    
• They may attempt to foster goodwill:
  
  
  • Expect generous donations made to various Community programs, such as the arts, education, sports\recreation, and conservation groups.
    
    

Watch for these attempts to divide and conquer the Community:

• Chambers of Commerce may be enlisted as allies.
• Businesses and individuals encountering the immediate negative financial impacts from the proposed quarry, such local realtors and homeowners with homes for sale, may be pitted against the Community as a whole.
• Truckers, equipment manufacturers, and equipment service providers may be enlisted as their spokespersons.

Watch for these attempts to wear us down:

• They may slow down the application process citing the complexity of the case, or the need for more time to conduct the necessary studies.
• The stated strategy from Lowndes Holding Corp, was to "wear down, and burn out" the Community opposition.

Watch for these attempts to negate and discredit us:

• They will likely avoid having an open debate of the issue with knowledgeable people.
  
  
  • Their materials state: "Please join us as we work together to generate solutions that minimize our impact and address challenges", yet they have declined to meet with the Community's representatives.
  • They have refused to meet with FORCE or attend Councilor McCarthy's Public Meeting in September.
  • Instead door-to-door house visits and telemarketing campaigns are being done to explain their case to homeowners, one on one.
  • Community Open Houses hosted to "provide more information about the project and offer Community members the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback" provide very little detailed information, and only a continuation of the general assurances that everything will be OK.
    
    
• Selected St Marys' employees may even move in to the proposed quarry neighbourhood to demonstrate that it's alright to live next to a quarry.
• They may challenge the work of the FORCE Steering Committee and our hired Community experts and position our cause as "NIMBYism" (Not In My Back Yard).

But none of those tactics change the application.

The application for the quarry states the intent to blast and excavate 40 metres below the surface right into our drinking water aquifer, it estimates up to 1140 truck trips per day, that's a truck arriving or leaving almost every 30 seconds. Unless St Marys Cement changes, or removes, the application they cannot soften this message.

The facts remain.

Aggregate extraction is not a benign rural activity, nor is it temporary. It can:

• dry up wells,
• produce noise and dust that negatively impacts human health,
• introduce fast moving, slow stopping transport trucks on our rural roads,
• remove arable land from the production of food - forever,
• destroy pristine natural features and dewater wetlands, and
• devalue properties for generations.

It is however highly profitable for the companies that operate quarries. That's why we expect St Marys Cement to engage in every effort to win us over. And when we resist, it's possible they'll attempt to discredit, divide and conquer us.

So... be on alert for the various messages that will be coming your way, and for a little family fun, consider reading the newspaper and brochures with your children and make it a game to identify which public relations tactic is being used!