Development Pressures
The greatest threat to the function of the moraine is land development on and below its surface, particularly in the headwaters. The estimated current population on the moraine land itself is roughly 200,000 but this number continues to grow at a frantic pace, with large urban developments occurring in Stouffville, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Oak Ridges and Aurora. This rapid development is especially apparent in Oak Ridges, where land previously set aside for conservation has, as recently as 2009, been opened up by the Richmond Hill Town Council for development. Another five million people live in close proximity. Use of the moraine is currently under dispute; environmental groups such as the Sierra Club maintain the area's delicate ecosystems are threatened by development pressures. Attractive forests and hilly relief typical of the moraine are a magnet for developers looking for building opportunities in the densely populated Greater Toronto Area. However, many planners and residents see a need to preserve the moraine from the negative aspects of urban sprawl.
Moreover, because it is a rich resource for sand and gravel, it has become a significant source of materials for the aggregate industry of the Greater Toronto Area.
Read more about this topic: Oak Ridges Moraine
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or pressures:
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)