Forgotten waste sites: After mapping, what then?

Truths that many don’t want to know
By TEVIAH MORO Orillia Packet and Times November 13 2010
Coun. Wayne Gardy’s concerns about the potential impact of identifying former dump sites on property owners in Orillia is understandable.
But pretending the problem isn’t there isn’t going to make it go away.

On Friday, homeowners expressed their fears about what may lie beneath their land and how long-forgotten waste could affect property values.
Mapping out these old disposal sites on the city’s new official plan could also limit how much homeowners can do with their properties. There is both the spectre of remediation work and costly red tape for redevelopment. From this standpoint, it’s better to not even dig for those answers.
But there is another way at looking at the question of former waste-disposal sites. Not knowing what kind of waste was dumped beneath your home is a little unnerving. What might happen if you start excavating and find some toxic jackpot? And what effect might that waste have on our lakes, rivers and streams? It would seem that this is why the Ministry of the Environment wants to know what lies beneath Orillia.
Through the city’s efforts to build on a brownfield at West Street South, Orillians have come to understand the modern-day implications of their community’s industrial past.
As other projects move forward — a social services hub planned for Queen Street, for example — environmental hurdles are becoming par for the course.
But the Sunshine City is not unlike many communities in Ontario. Healthy industrial economies of yesteryear have left their not-so-healthy marks.
Ergo, asks Gardy: “Are we going to compensate (homeowners) for loss of value because the MoE wants more specifics?”
Gardy has been on council long enough to know the city will not. But the question of compensation is hard to resist. Depending on what waste has been left behind, who should take responsibility — the municipality, Queen’s Park, Ottawa or the private sector?
As it relates to the West Street brownfield, that very question has been pursued to no realistic end. Ottawa is not about to compensate Orillia for manufacturing landing gear for mosquito bombers during the Second World War.
The incoming city council should be asking the province about its game plan. If Ontario is so pocked with these former dumps, just what sort of policy is the province contemplating beyond simple mapping?