Site 41 dump still not quite dead, say opponents

End of legislature session kills bill to withdraw approval
By Gail Swainson Toronto Star
Opponents of a controversial garbage dump north of Barrie are warning that Premier Dalton McGuinty’s prorogation of the legislature — which killed a private member’s bill that would have permanently revoked approvals for Site 41 — leaves the door open on a revival of the controversial landfill proposal.
“Until the province revokes the certificate of approval, county council could still sell the site to a private developer or develop it again themselves,” Anne Ritchie Nahuis, a local farmer and dump opponent, said Monday.
Simcoe County council — which voted to scrap the dump last fall following intense public pressure — has so far refused to make a formal request to the province to have the certificate of approval withdrawn.
Provincial Environment Minister John Gerrestsen said during question period in the legislature last week that the province would revoke the certificate of approval if only county politicians would formally ask.
“If the County of Simcoe were to ask us, we would do that,” Gerrestsen said. He also said the dump is, “from a scientific viewpoint, an appropriate site,” a comment that enraged opponents.
“The science isn’t there,” Ritchie Nahuis said. “This site will contaminate the drinking water of a major aquifer, so how can he say the science is there?”
Last fall. Simcoe County Council voted to decommission Site 41 over widespread concerns the Alliston Aquifer, which lies directly under the 20.7-hectare site near Elmvale in Tiny Township, would be contaminated by leachate.
Opponents cheered the move, thinking it meant the dump was dead. But approval at the provincial level was never actually revoked, meaning the proposal could be revived.
Critics say Simcoe County has also failed to properly mothball the site, further fuelling speculation it could be sold to a waste site developer or quietly brought back to life by the county once the spotlight has faded.
“The mothballing has not been complete,” said Judith Grant, chair of the Federation of Tiny Township Shoreline Associations, which opposes the dump. “Many key engineering elements — the pond, the berms, the road — are still in place.”
Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop, a Tory who sponsored Bill 32, the private member’s bill to revoke the operating certificate of approval for Dump Site 41, vowed Monday to reintroduce the bill as soon as possible.
“If we can put pressure on the government to do what is right, then we hope we can get it through before the next election,” Dunlop said. The next provincial election is scheduled for Oct. 6, 2011.
Dunlop said it’s time the province acknowledged the danger to local drinking water supplies of burying trash.
“These dumps all leach,” he said. “We have to grow up and do these things differently.”
Simcoe County is now exploring the feasibility of sending its unrecylable garbage to an energy-from-waste incinerator planned by York and Durham Regions or to another in Dufferin County, although a county policy currently prohibits the export of its trash.
York and Durham’s proposed $272 million incinerator is to be built by Covanta Energy Corp., which will design and operate the facility in Clarington, near Highway 401 in Courtice. Final approval rests with the provincial environment ministry.