No one wants Toronto's garbage tossed in their backyard (NIMBY), but there is a Niagara Region based company in the process of creating a GTA dump in Oxford County.
As a citizen of Woodstock, I'm 100% against this idea. As a Realtor, I sat through a seminar conducted for real estate professionals by Walker Environmental, and even they admitted land values could go down in the immediate area of the suggested dump in a former aggregate-like quarry.
Here's a story written late last week by an Ingersoll Times reporter.
()()()()()()()()()
OPAL delegation raises landfill concerns with government committee
By John Tapley
Friday, August 10, 2012
INGERSOLL - Oxford People Against the Landfill (OPAL) raised some questions and apparently some eyebrows with a presentation to a government committee reviewing the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA).
Howard De Jong and Chris Ruland brought forward OPAL's concerns about Walker Environmental Group's proposal for a landfill at a quarry in Zorra during a committee meeting in Orangeville, Ont., on Wednesday, June 27.
In making the presentation to the committee, which includes nine MPPs from the three major political parties – Conservative, Liberal and NDP , OPAL pointed out a lack of enforcement of the rehabilitation requirement of aggregate licences. The lack of enforcement is due, in part, to underfunding of the Ministry of Natural Resources, De Jong said.
“We feel our community is being threatened,” said De Jong in addressing the committee. “And part of the threatening details come from the Aggregate Resources Act, specifically the rehabilitation portion.”
He said the first page of the ARA identifies the reasons for the legislation, including requiring the rehabilitation of land from which aggregate has been extracted and to minimize adverse effects on the environment.
“Aggregate operations have found their way around rehabilitation site plans. They have found their way around commitments,” De Jong said. “With the seemingly unending list of waste companies working their way into existing aggregate operations all across the province, we must prepare ourselves or at least have a way to stop a clearly wrong application.”
Until now, he said, people in Oxford County have lived in a symbiotic relationship with the lime quarries.
“We've put up with dust, noise and trucks; we received some employment in return,” said De Jong. “It was a symbiotic relationship. When the wind blew in a certain direction, we knew that you just didn't hang the laundry out on those days.”
The final piece of the puzzle, said De Jong, was that the licensee was going to make things right again (by rehabilitating the quarry sites).
“We, as a community, counted on that, and we counted on them honouring their agreements.”
Circulating a hydrogeology map, De Jong said the quarry where the landfill is being proposed is directly on top of porous bedrock and an aquifer.
OPAL is also promoting that the province entertain higher and better world-class techniques in recycling practices.
“It can be done. It's been demonstrated in other areas of the world. We're sadly lacking,” De Jong said. “New operations (like the quarry landfill) really are not necessary.”
With about 150 years' worth of aggregate licences open in Ontario, the need to issue new licences should be proven, he said.
“We also feel that need has to be demonstrated before any landfills are placed in these quarries that actually have rehabilitation agreements attached to them, which aren't being honoured.”
The ARA requires more transparency and public opinion needs to carry more weight, said De Jong.
“These are our homes, our communities, a stone's throw away from where family is buried, on top of an aquifer in one of the few remaining areas in southwestern Ontario that still draws water from freshwater wells.”
In a question and answer session that followed OPAL's presentation Liberal MPP Mike Colle (Eglington-Lawrence) said Oxford seems to be getting “the double whammy.”
“You've had the quarry; now the proponent is trying to turn it into a landfill site?”
De Jong said the landfill proponent is collecting terms of reference for the project and yet the owner of the aggregate licence is carrying on operations seemingly unaffected.
“So obviously, what you're making very clear here is that the rehabilitation site plans really aren't worth the paper they're written on,” Colle said.
Conservative MPP Ted Arnott (Wellington-Halton Hills) thanked De Jong for his presentation and said it “sheds light on a part of the issue I wasn't aware of, certainly.”
“I think you've made a number of of very significant and salient points that the committee needs to consider in the context of the overall review of the Aggregate Resources Act.”
Besides presenting its concerns to the committee, OPAL has filed an official complaint about the proposed circumvention of aggregate licence rehabilitation requirements by Carmeuse Lime and Walker Environmental Group.
The group has also written letters to the Minister of the Environment and requested that Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie and MPP Ernie Hardeman support the no landfill cause.
The full transcript of OPAL's presentation to the Standing Committee on General Government – Aggregate Resources Act Review are available on the Internet at: http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/committee-proceedings/committee_transcripts_details.do?Date=2012-06-27&ParlCommID=8958&BillID=&Business=Aggregate+Resources+Act+review&locale=en&DocumentID=26476
No comments:
Post a Comment