$240,000 and Rising: Cost of Withholding Modflow Revealed!

SDS41 April 3 2010
Simcoe County has spent more than $240,000 to withhold the Site 41 Modflow calibrated computer model from the Site 41 Community Monitoring Committee and the public, a letter to the Site 41 Community Monitoring Committee from Tiny Township resident Hugh Anson-Cartwright reveals.
The quarter-million-dollar total is the amount the County says it has spent to September, 2009. One can only guess at the massive expenditures since that date! The County has decided to launch what will be a massively expensive legal challenge of an Information and Privacy Commissioner’s order that it obtain the Modflow from consultant Genivar (previously Jagger Hims).
The quarter-million-dollar total does not include legal and consultant expenses from September, 2009 to the present, and does not include any staff time.
The astonishing cost to taxpayers of the County’s insistence on withholding basic scientific calculations regarding Site 41 is matched only by the continuing commitment to secrecy evidenced in a letter from Warden Cal Patterson to Stephen Ogden.
The two letters are on the agenda of the April 8 CMC meeting, at the Tiny municipal office in Perkinsfield, which is open to the public.
Ogden, in his capacity as a CMC member, had asked County Environmental Services Director Rob McCullough in January to update the total spent on lawyers and consultants to keep the Modflow from the committee. McCullough had provided the total last year: $11,068.50 to September, 2008. When McCullough did not respond, Ogden appealed to Patterson.
Patterson states in his March 26 reply to Ogden that the information is not easily accessible and it will take time for staff to search and prepare the material for disclosure. He appears not to be aware that the material exists in an accessible and indexed form, as uncovered by Anson-Cartwright’s Freedom of Information request, which is more specific than the simple number sought by Ogden.
In his letter dated March 30, Anson-Cartwright details how he filed an FOI request June 20, 2009, asking for costing information with respect to the decision by the County to refuse access to the Modflow data.
“Now, over eight months later…I have received from the County Clerk a package of 305 pages of documents including an Index of Records Nos. 1-38. Of these 305 pages, 137 pages are copies of Purchasing Bylaws available on the County’s website,” Anson-Cartwright writes.
“Twenty-two of the records are invoices from the county’s lawyers, Graham, Wilson & Green, totaling $112,668.61 (with details blanked out). Together with the invoice from Jagger Hims for the Modflow demonstration at the 2008 tripartite meetings, the total comes to $245,000.00. This does not include all the County staff time spent by Alan Greenwood and the Corporate Communications Department to fight the legitimate request of taxpayers to know how our hard-earned money is being spent.”
In his letter, Patterson uses time-honoured bureaucratic excuses to explain that it will be difficult and expensive to provide Ogden with the information just obtained by Anson-Cartwright.
“Your inquiry is limited and specific, which would require staff to review individual invoices and identify the entries or part entries that relate to your request,” he tells Ogden, adding that staff will prepare a cost estimate of what Ogden will have to pay for the time spent looking for the documents.
“Although we appreciate your frustration over the County’s delay in responding to you, we would appreciate your understanding the County is responsible for delivering a variety of services to more than 300,000 residents in 18 municipalities,” Patterson writes. “As such it is not always possible to address individual inquiries as quickly as we would like…”
Ogden’s question related to what the County spent in fighting the FOI request he filed in September, 2007, asking for the calibrated computer model of hydrogeological conditions at Site 41. The CMC wanted an independent expert to run the model and verify Jagger Hims’ conclusions. The County refused to supply it. Last August, county councillors voted to seek a judicial review of the IPC order. Lawyers are presently preparing to go to court on the issue.
Also in August, councillors voted to spend $250,000 on public relations in an attempt to change public perceptions in the wake of the Site 41 debacle (a County report in February stated that around $190,000 had been spent).
Throughout this effort to stop Jagger Hims’ calculations from being made public, the County has been dismissive of the Site 41 Community Monitoring Committee. But CMC members have critical responsibilities as long as there is a Certificate of Approval for Site 41.
Here’s why:
In 1996, the Environmental Assessment Board recognized the high degree of civic responsibility local residents had shown during the hearings and decided that their voices on the committee should be strong. Condition 25.1 of the C of A states: “A Community Monitoring Committee (CMC) shall be established by the County prior to the construction and development of the landfill site for the purpose of providing community review of the development, operation, ongoing monitoring, closure and post-closure care related to the landfill site. The CMC will serve as a focal point for the collection, review and exchange of information relevant to both County and local concerns in connection with the landfill site.”
Three months after County Council voted to discontinue all future development of Site 41, County Administration produced documents that made our councillors’ vote very suspect. The key messaging for county councillors to convey to the public was that the C of A provides the County the authority to construct and develop Site 41, the C of A confirms the sound science behind the development of Site 41 deeming it to be environmentally responsible and, in partnership with the zoning by-laws, the C of A has the effect of increasing the net value of the land. The holding of the C of A is the only way to truly ensure the County’s direction is maintained, councillors were told.
So, it appears there is a hidden agenda here. If the Modflow exists and validates all the actions taken by the County and the Provincial Ministry of the Environment over all those years then why can’t the taxpayers see it?
A couple of explanations come to mind.
A. the Modflow exists but does not validate the political positions taken
B. it does not exist and therefore never did validate the positions taken.
As long as the C of A exists and can be used, it is incumbent upon the CMC to get to the bottom of this matter so that the public is fully informed of the implications of any attempt to undertake waste management at Site 41.