Preliminary OMB hearing

By Ann Truyens AWARE Oro-Medonte January 11 2012

This Thursday, January 12 at 10:30 a.m., there will be a preliminary OMB Hearing held in the O-M Township council chamber.

This meeting is in regards to the application made to the Ministry of Environment (MOE) by TRY Recycling and O-M Township to set up a construction and demolition debris recycling facility, namely the ‘Oro-Medonte Community Environmental Centre’ (CEC), on the corner of the 7th Line and the Old Barrie Road.

On the surface, this seems to be a progressive move towards diverting materials away from landfills and working towards a zero waste environment. But what happens when a great idea gets put in the wrong place? Putting a recycling operation on the Oro Moraine could create another Site 41!

This property is owned by the township and is located on the Oro Moraine in a partially excavated sand/gravel pit. The distance between the bottom of the pit and the 1st aguifer is only 14m (45 ft.) and is of a porous nature. Therefore, this could not only seriously affect our drinking water, it could also pollute the Hawkestone watershed and Lake Simcoe.

Oro-Medonte has entered into an agreement with TRY Recycling to set up a recycling depot and processing area on the floor of the gravel pit, where the debris will be ground up and stockpiled only 45 feet above the aquifer where our drinking water comes from.

As far as we know, they will not be putting up any buildings to contain the grinding operation and prevent air and groundwater chemical contamination. So our environment will not be fully protected!

TRY Recycling is a company that processes and recycles things such as residential junk from your home and garage cleanups, construction and renovation debris, lawn and garden cleanup, yard waste, roofing shingles, wood, reinforced concrete, rubble, recyclable fill, freon units, tires and asphalt. It is proposed that a paving compound be made on the floor of the sandpit. That’s right – an asphalt plant! With the very porous nature of the sand, any chemical contamination will leach quickly down into the aquifers. Our wells tap into these aquifers. We drink that water. That’s why so many people are against using this site.

Oro-Medonte Township has been very secretive (in-camera) about the whole TRY Recycling project and refuses to let them have any contact with the people in Oro-Medonte. We wonder what our Council is up to and hiding from us?

Please read the attached letter that was sent at the last possible minute before the Christmas holidays by TRY recycling CEO Jim Graham to the people living in close proximity to the proposed site. In it he states that further information on the proposed project may be reviewed on the MOE website. And he further says that if anyone has any concerns or objections to this application, they must send written comments to the Environmental Approvals Access and Service Integration Branch within 30 days. However, there is nothing listed on the EBR website as yet, which is very unusual, so people cannot file complaints or concerns to the MOE against the project. Most people prefer to conveniently do it online..instead of by mail or fax.  

In the meantime, the preliminary OMB hearing had already been scheduled for this Thursday because several members of AWARE O-M, who live close by and will be directly affected by this project if it is approved, had filed a complaint to the OMB.

Please attend the OMB meeting tomorrow if at all possible. The least we can do is fill the council chamber and show our support for the small group of people who are fighting this project.

If you need more info, please check out this website