In addition to land holdings at 24, 130, 167, and 203 White Chapel Road, two additional properties, 254 and 253 White Chapel Road are proposed as “expansion lands,” to be included in the Ministerial Zoning Order. Picton Terminals is more than doubling in size. An MZO would apply to all of the pictured properties and parcels. (Image courtesy of the County’s GIS). Picton Terminals consists of two adjacent parcels, the first, about 75% of the property, is zoned Extractive Industrial (MX). The second is zoned Rural (RU1). The lands it has been working to acquire over the past decade are also zoned RU, or rural. All of the surrounding land is farmland and Picton Terminals’ expansion plans involve the destruction of a number of historic farmhouses and barns.
Picton Terminals has met a deadline of December 26 to secure additional property for inclusion in its MZO.
In addition to its current land holdings at 24, 130, 167, and 203 White Chapel Road — properties acquired as near neighbours give up and sell — Picton Terminals has identified 254 White Chapel Road and 253 White Chapel Road, currently owned by Michael Hymus, as lands to be included in a Ministerial Zoning Order, should it be granted.
Taken together, the properties will more than double the Terminals’ current 69 acres, most of which are dedicated to a huge rock quarry.
The County’s settlement agreement with the Terminals allows it to expand its operations under a clause detailing its rights to include newly acquired properties in what will be MX-Industrial zoning. These are identified as “expansion lands.”
All of the additional properties are currently zoned rural, and some feature historic farmhouses from one of the earliest settled parts of the County. The White Chapel, founded in 1809, is a major landmark of the area. Its caretakers are demanding the County take its position at the edge of what could become an even larger rock quarry into account.
A condition of the MZO is that all aggregate extraction must comply with the provisions of the Aggregate Resources Act. While it awaits new zoning orders, however, the Terminals began blasting and quarrying the cliff face on Picton Bay in October.
It did not notify either Quinte Conservation or MNRF of its activities, nor did it secure the requisite QCA permit before it started the work.
Councillors are now signalling that reining in what appears to be an illegal rock quarry at the Terminals is a more pressing priority than an MZO.
At Council January 14, Councillor John Hirsch noted he would be bringing a motion to the Council meeting of 28 January requesting staff “to investigate and report back to Council on the legality of Picton Terminals’ rock removal or quarrying operations.”
Neighbours complain that blasting and ship loading are occurring round the clock, while across the County residents have expressed shock and outrage at the decimation of the escarpment, a natural heritage feature of Picton Bay.
The Terminals says it is constructing a platform to put Parrish & Heimbecker’s planned grain silos at water level.
Chief Building Official Ryan Arcand confirmed that on December 17 P & H filed two permit applications, one for eight concrete grain silos and another for a truck probe shelter.
“Locating the silos at water level may not have been the best alternative,” said Leslie Stewart of the County Conservancy. “Perhaps another location would have prevented the needless and permanent destruction of the limestone escarpment.
“Building a huge platform at the water’s edge is just a pretext to enable Picton Terminals to blast and quarry more rock in lucrative contracts with Toronto and Hamilton with no quarrying permit and no oversight under the Aggregate Resources Act,” she continued.
“We know Ben Doornekamp is making millions selling off the limestone escarpment.”
Meanwhile, the County’s MZO request is in limbo.
CAO Marcia Wallace and County lawyer Sarah Viau consulted Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing staff and lawyers about the County’s settlement with Picton Terminals in December, seeking direction in submitting an MZO request.
The Ministry team “had lots of questions about the history leading up to the Minutes of Settlement,” noted Ms. Wallace. “We asked for specific and written direction on what the municipality needs to do to move ahead.”
The Ministry made it clear, however, that seeking an MZO as part of a legal settlement was not the usual way of proceeding.
“The Ministry has guidance on its website on what it needs to consider an MZO, but that guidance doesn’t explain what happens when the parties have a legal settlement. This is partly what is causing Ministry staff and lawyers to ask questions as it’s not clear cut what the next steps are,” she said.
“They told the municipality that they need to discuss this case internally. They did not say when we could expect more information on what to do next.
“The Minister could decide he has no interest in pursuing the MZO.
“In that case, the municipality would head back to court.”
A Say No to the MZO petition gathered close to 1400 signatures from residents across the County. It was presented to the Minister in December.
The legal firm Goodmans LLP, at the request of the County Conservancy, also wrote to Minister Callandra to urge him to reject the County’s request for an MZO for Picton Terminals.
That letter notes,
“There is absolutely no reason for…a zoning order, other than to deprive the public of the right to participate in the process before a decision is made.
“The obvious rationale for pursuing the zoning order is to circumvent the Planning Act rezoning process — the very process that enabled the public and the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte to express their strong opposition to the proposed rezoning of the PT property [in 2020], and which led the last Council to unanimously deny Picton Terminals’ rezoning application four years ago.”
After that denial, the Terminals continued to store shipping containers on its property. In 2022, the County sought an injunction to restrain Picton Terminals from engaging in the activities that Council had denied in 2020, as well as a ruling from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on applicable provincial and municipal bylaws and regulations. The case was set to go to court in October of 2024.
This summer, however, Council decided, over a series of closed sessions, that it would seek to settle out of court with the Terminals. That settlement turns on the County’s undertaking to apply for an MZO.
“The only thing to do, and what has been the will of the residents of the County from the outset, is to do what they said they were going to do, and take the Terminals to court,” said County resident and U.S. attorney Ryan Wallach.
“Nobody understands how or why this Council decided to jettison its long-awaited day in court to pursue a settlement which appears to have been written by Picton Terminals; a settlement that was negotiated in a backroom deal that gives Picton Terminals and Ben Doornekamp everything they want — and even more than what the Council denied them in 2020. It defies belief.”
Freedom of Information: Legal Fees
Quinte News reported in November 2024 the results of a Freedom of Information request into the cost of the County’s various legal proceedings against and consultations about Picton Terminals.
Over two years, between January 1, 2022 and September 30, 2024, the municipality’s legal fees totalled $417,660.
Four County residents visited MPP Tyler Allsopp last week to ask him to advise Minister Callandra of the absence of local support for an MZO for Picton Terminals.
Penny Morris, Andy Janikowski, Deborah Schuller, and Ian Beveridge visited the MPP at his offices in Rossmore Friday afternoon.
“We wanted to make clear that there is very low local support for this MZO, which is not required to ship grain, an historic activity on the Bay,” said Deborah Schuller.
“There is active, increasingly frustrated, and often angry opposition to the Terminals’ expansion plans and rock quarry, and at the County’s decision to settle out of court — while keeping residents in the dark.”
Dr. Schuller canvassed door to door, collecting signatures for the Say No to the MZO petition.
“Across neighbourhoods, ages, genders, socioeconomic status, occupations, almost no one sees the benefit,” she noted.
Another key mandate was to draw Mr. Allsopp’s attention to the lack of provincial oversight.
“Why have MNRF and MECP turned a blind eye to a decade of highly lucrative, completely unsupervised rock quarrying in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, right on top of the town water supply?”
CUTLINE: In addition to land holdings at 24, 130, 167, and 203 White Chapel Road, two additional properties, 254 and 253 White Chapel Road are proposed as “expansion lands,” to be included in the Ministerial Zoning Order. Picton Terminals is more than doubling in size. An MZO would apply to all of the pictured properties and parcels.(County’s GIS).
Picton Terminals consists of two adjacent parcels, the first, about 75% of the property, is zoned Extractive Industrial (MX). The second is zoned Rural 1 (RU1). The lands it has been working to acquire over the past decade are zoned RU, or rural. All of the surrounding land is farmland and its expansion plans involve the destruction of a number of historic farmhouses and barns.
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