Who We Are

The Reform Gravel Mining Coalition formed to demand the Ontario government take the actions necessary to protect lives, communities and the environment from the devastating impacts of the gravel mining industry. Partners in the coalition are Environmental Defence, Council of Canadians, Water Watchers, and the Wilderness Committee.

Environmental DefenceThe Counsel of CanadiansWater Watchers

We represent grassroot community groups engaged in David and Goliath struggles against the corporations, often multinationals, that put profits over people and the environment. Our first initiative is to Demand A Moratorium Now on all new approvals for gravel mining in Ontario. The DAMN! campaign is endorsed by a diverse range of community groups also opposing new approvals for gravel mining in their communities:

  • Action Champlain
  • AWARE Simcoe
  • Alton Village Association
  • Belfountain Community Organization
  • Blue Mountain Watershed Trust
  • BurlingtonGreen Environmental Association
  • Caledon Village Association
  • Cataract Community Representatives
  • Cheltenham Community Representatives
  • Citizens Against Melrose Quarry
  • Citizens for Safe Groundwater
  • Climate Action Network Now, Town of Blue Mountain
  • Conserving our Rural Ecosystems
  • Federation of Tiny Township Shoreline Association
  • Food and Water First
  • Forks of the Credit Preservation Group
  • FORCE (Friends of Rural Communities and the Environment)
  • Forks of the Credit/Brimstone Residents Association
  • Friends of Ball’s Bridge and Little Lakes
  • Friends of Lanark Highlands
  • Friends of the Waverly Uplands
  • Green Lake Property Owners Association
  • National Farmers Union, Ontario
  • NDACT (North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Task Force)
  • Niagara Water Protection Alliance
  • NSERA/ANSWER
  • Oakville Green
  • Ontario Public Interest Research Group, Guelph
  • Ontario Rivers Alliance
  • Pitsense
  • PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land)
  • POWER (Protect Our Water & Environmental Resources)
  • Protect the Tract
  • Rare Charitable Research Reserve
  • Sault Naturalists
  • Sierra Club, Peel Group
  • Simcoe County Greenbelt Alliance
  • Skeleton Lake Cottagers Organization
  • Terra Cotta Traffic Association
  • Village of Inglewood Association
  • West Caledon Aggregate Study Group

Will your organization endorse a moratorium on new gravel mining approvals in Ontario?

Our Spokespeople

Sarah Harmer

Sarah Harmer

As well as being an award winning Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer has spent the past few decades as a citizen advocate for the living world. This has included the fight to protect Burlington’s Mount Nemo from being further industrialized and hollowed out by a multinational gravel mining company. Mount Nemo is a biological crown jewel and fountainhead within the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere, supplying surface water to endangered and threatened species and drinking water to thousands of people throughout its watersheds. She founded PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land) in 2005 and was a part the development of a Green Gravel Standard in Ontario, and intervened in a National Energy Board Hearing on fossil fuel pipelines. Sarah participated in the Nobel Women’s Initiative fact finding trip to the Canadian Tar Sands, meeting with Indigenous women and community leaders, as well as the fossil fuel industry in Alberta and British Columbia.

Doug Tripp

Doug Tripp

Doug is deeply committed to environmental, water and gravel mining issues. With Masters Degrees in Chemical Engineering and Higher Education, his career included 27 years as a Professor & Dean at Durham College and 20 years as an independent consultant, specializing in energy and environmental management. His consulting included the creation of the Canadian Institute for Energy Training (CIET) through which he introduced professional training and certification for energy management professionals. In recognition of this achievement, Doug was the first Canadian elected to the Energy Managers Hall of Fame of the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), an international professional association. His commitment to addressing issues related to gravel mining began in Rockwood in 2013 as a member of the Concerned Residents Coalition opposing an application for the “Hidden” Quarry. Doug is also a Water Watchers board member and lives in Stratford Ontario with his wife, Dee.

We acknowledge that we work on the Treaty and traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties, the Treaty and traditional territory of Williams Treaty Nations (Alderville, Hiawatha, Curve Lake, Hiawatha and Scugog Island, Beausoleil, Georgina Island and Rama Island First Nations). Ancestrally this territory was home to other First Nations including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and the Pentun peoples. Today, this land is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. In addition, our work takes place nationwide, across all the Treaty and unceded lands of Turtle Island. We recognize, respect and strive to reconcile the inherent Aboriginal and Treaty rights of all the Indigenous peoples as upheld within the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of Canada.