Driving from Peterborough on Highway 115, there is a point at which one crosses a height of land, and a view opens up, of fields, forests, and Lake Ontario, stretching on a clear day nearly to Toronto. The view is from the Oak Ridges Moraine: a band of rolling hills extending from near Peterborough, westwards across the top of the Greater Toronto Area.

Glaciers scraped and piled gravel to form the moraine during the last ice age, creating the most distinctive natural feature in this part of Ontario. It is also among the most endangered, as a result of uncontrolled urban growth and a political system intent on placing roadblocks before citizens seeking to protect it.

The future of the moraine is being determined in rallies and council chambers across the region. In Caledon, residents fear the impacts of proposed quarries on natural habitats and groundwater. In Uxbridge plans for a housing development known as Gan Eden grind forward over opposition from both Uxbridge and Durham Region. Perhaps the fiercest battle is taking place in Richmond Hill, where there are plans to house 100,000 people in subdivisions extending right across the moraine: in effect, an asphalt ax that would split the moraine in two.

These controversies are about both what we can see, and about what is hidden. To the hiker or picnicker the stakes are obvious: quiet forests of oak, birch and maple, rolling fields, cool clear lakes, and birds, mammals and other wildlife, as well as the diverse plants that support them. But beneath the surface is the moraine's other dimension: beds of sand, gravel and clay -- a rocky sponge that collects water and melting snow, replenishing underground aquifers and feeding the Don, Humber, Rouge, Credit and two dozen other streams and rivers. Thanks in part to the moraine, spring floods are moderated and rivers flow during even the driest summers.

Development would have many impacts on these features. Replacing forests with malls and bungalows eliminates habitat for both wildlife and for people that enjoy natural areas, while encouraging urban sprawl, and its accompanying wasteful use of energy and land. Converting fields to roads and parking lots prevents rainwater from seeping into the ground, sending it instead by sewers directly into streams, often laden with the salt and petrochemical crud that accumulates on our highways.

Many parties have a stake in the moraine. Developers seek open access to this land, and to the enormous profits to be made in suburban growth. Activists like Glenn De Baeremaeker of Save the Rouge Valley System seek controls on development, designation of much of the moraine as parkland, and a long-term plan for its protection as a single unit. Suburban city councillors, usually eager to embrace development, exhibit awkward contortions as they seek to satisfy both developers and citizens. The province, hobbled by environmental attitudes as unimaginative as a Mississauga strip mall, refuses to show leadership. Instead, much may be decided by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), an unelected body.

This has been strongly criticized, with good reason. Rising public concerns need to be heard, but the OMB is a poor instrument for citizen action. Participating in its hearings is expensive, because experts must be hired to help make one's case. As Mr. De Baeremaeker noted in the Globe and Mail, decisions are being made "in a room where the admission ticket is $1-million."

Making it even harder for citizens to make their case is the fact that there is still much we do not know about the moraine. We know, in general, that development affects water quality and quantity. It's much harder to be specific: to assert that this particular project will affect that river by exactly this much. But without specific knowledge, it's much harder to argue against a proposed development.

We encounter, then, one of the lesser known consequences of recent budget cuts for scientific research, particularly at the provincial level. As a result of these cuts, knowledge we should have about the moraine, gained by scientists working in government and universities, is missing when it is most needed.

It would be a credit to all of us if the future of the Oak Ridges Moraine were to be decided on the basis of open and careful discussion, informed by the best science, instead of, as now seems likely, by the grinding inevitability of bulldozers.