Opposition mounts to mega-dump plans in Russell

By David Gonczol, The Ottawa Citizen November 22, 2010
OTTAWA — Opponents of a plan to build the largest waste-diversion and landfill site in Eastern Ontario have banded together to “dump the dump” just days after the project was announced last week.
The proposed Capital Region Resource Recovery Center in Russell Township, on Ottawa’s southeast doorstep, plans to capture about 250,000 tonnes of industrial, commercial, construction and demolition waste each year, most of it generated in Ottawa and now trucked to New York state.
The proposed site is surrounded by farmland and sits on a former shale quarry.
Dave Brown, a nearby property owner and member of Dump the Dump, said the group fears rock lining the quarry has been fractured by decades of blasting and won’t stop waste from seeping into a huge underground aquifer, contaminating “half of the water table” of Eastern Ontario.
There are also fears the water that has accumulated in the quarry will be pumped out and this will lower the water table and cause area wells to run dry.
Hubert Bourque, the project’s general manager, said the landfill is planned for a part of the property untouched by blasting, and not the current quarry.
Bourque said studies conducted by the company behind the plan, Taggart Miller Environmental Services, a Toronto-based firm with a variety of commercial operations in many parts of the province, including four similar waste diversion facilities, leave them confident there will be no impact on the water table. He said the company will also ensure that nearby property owners are compensated for any decrease in value of their property as a result of the project.
Brown is skeptical. “I’ve met a lot of people who are discouraged and didn’t know what to do and they weren’t sleeping and some had been visited by a big black Mercedes and spun a story,” said Brown.
“The ones closest to the dump were met with these smooth-talking guys promising the world and everything is going to be good, we are going to do it right, and all that.”
Local residents and politicians were caught off-guard by the proposal, which the company and municipal officials say was revealed to no one until last week.
Mistrust of local officials remains after a controversial attempt to institute a recent bilingual sign bylaw was viewed by some as badly bungled by politicians and township employees.
However, the company denies the project was purposely kept quiet until after the municipal election.
The company plans an open house at the Russell Arena on Nov. 25 from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. where they hope to receive public feedback that will be used to fine-tune the project.
Brown, however, said he believes the open house is part of a process to control opposition to the proposal.
“This isn’t a meeting. They don’t want a meeting. A meeting is confrontational. They want people wandering in so they can give them a cup of coffee and tell them how beautiful it is,” said Brown.
Brown says a similar project at the same site was rejected 20 years ago because of fissured rock.
Municipal officials contacted Friday said they were aware of a similar effort 20 years ago, but had no details on why it never proceeded.
A similar landfill proposal in the Napanee area was stopped by the Ministry of the Environment in 2006 over concerns about fissures in the limestone lining the site, fuelling fears nearby groundwater could be contaminated.
The Russell project must receive approval after an environmental assessment from various provincial bodies as well as municipal permits and approvals for buildings and zoning changes before the project can proceed.
Bourque says the company will proceed with its plan only if it has community support. It has already filed a notice of commencement with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for a government environmental assessment.
Bourque says the facility will divert 60 per cent of the waste it takes, leaving only 40 per cent heading to an onsite landfill and compost. He said this would meet Ontario’s goal of diverting substantial amounts of these types of waste from landfills.
“Right now, only about twelve per cent is diverted and the reason it is so low is that the infrastructure is not there,” said Bourque.
“The disposal rates are increasing in the Ottawa region because of a lack of capacity so we have a good business case for that waste coming back to the region, but coming back for diversion rather than disposal,” he added.
The company expects upwards of 30 permanent jobs to be created and a substantial contribution to a tax base that municipal officials have long been unable to diversify beyond residential growth.
Brown says a meeting for Dump the Dump supporters tonight will be a strategy session.