A news conference at Queen's Park last week brought to light additional concerns about the proposed new Highway 24, about a third of which will travel through the greenbelt in northwest Flamborough.

Dr. Paul Cary, vice-president of a 500-member citizens' group called Stop the 424 Association, charged that the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is neglecting to do a complete assessment of culturally significant First Nation archaeological sites along the proposed study area for the highway. The assessment is being called for by the provincial government's own archaeological advisors, he attests.

The Cambridge family physician and Sheffield-area resident made his accusations in the media studio at Queen's Park last Monday, in hopes of convincing government officials "to announce that this road is dead." He was accompanied by another protester, Flamborough resident Mike Blackborrow.

The proposed new 31-kilometre highway, which would run between Brantford and Cambridge, gained public attention last summer when the MTO hosted a couple of public meetings, including one in Rockton that attracted about 400 people - most of whom were vehemently opposed to the road. Even though ministry officials assured residents that the new road will be two lanes, Cary and other members of the group are convinced it will be a four-lane highway, prompting the Stop the 424 Association moniker.

Members of the group argue that the highway isn't needed and will destroy prime farmland, wetlands and part of the greenbelt. Not only will it cut through Hamilton's newly-designated greenbelt, Cary said, it will also dissect the Galt-Paris Moraine, the drinking water source for more than half a million people in the Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo areas, as well as part of Flamborough's greenbelt strip. The last remaining wetlands of the Beverly Swamp in Flamborough will also be traversed, he said.

WETLANDS

"Most damning of all, in order to find any route at all, the Ministry of Transport planners had to switch off the 'wetlands' function of their very expensive route-finding program as it refused to select a route through so much wetland," a press release from the protest group stated.

In an e-mail this week, MTO representative Monica Fleck countered that, "Study technical work (such as consideration of archaeological sites and wetlands) has been conducted in accordance with the MTO Environmental Standards and Practices documents that were developed through extensive consultation with the mandated provincial and federal agencies, as well as through public consultation using the Environmental Bill of Rights Registry."

(The Environmental Standards and Practices documents are available at http://www.raqsb.mto.gov.on.ca/techpubs/eps.nsf/epswv?openview and from Publications Ontario.)

"We want them (government officials) to realize this road is a complete waste of time," Cary said last week. "It's really a pork barrel by (Brant MPP Dave) Levac wanting Brantford to have its own road to Highway 401."

Levac, a vocal supporter of the new highway, was quoted in a June 2006 copy of Hansard referring to the new highway as 424. Brantford mayor Mike Hancock has also publicly referred to it several times as the 424 Highway, Cary said.

Members of the protest group say they have good reason to believe the route will be wider than two lanes because MTO officials have said they want a 120-metre right of way (large enough for six lanes) with limited access, on-off ramps and filter lanes to allow traffic to enter the highway.

The project's public profile has waned in recent months, a circumstance which prompted Cary to hold a news conference in Toronto. To date, there have been no additional public meetings announced by the MTO and Cary said submitted comments about the project to officials have gone unanswered for several months.

"We intend to put on public pressure continuously," he pledged. "We've wounded the beast, but we haven't killed it yet."

According to Fleck, the Hwy. 24 study team received a large volume of comments and questions on the information presented at the June, 2007 PICs and the August, 2007 Rural Stakeholder Meetings.

"The issues have been assessed, and a strategy is being developed to address them," she noted in an e-mail this week. "An overview of this strategy will be released in mid-June, 2008. We anticipate the strategy will be completed by late summer 2008, when it will be released for public review."