Crombie says ‘stroke of a pen’ could stop Dresden landfill project

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DRESDEN – The leader of the Ontario Liberal Party said she would stop a controversial and fiercely proposed landfill and recycling project near here, if she becomes the next prime minister.

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“I think with a stroke of a pen we can make this all stop,” said Bonnie Crombie Friday while at the dormant landfill less than a kilometer from Dresden.

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She was campaigning with Cathy Burghardt-Jesson, the Liberal candidate running in the byelection for the vacant Lambton-Kent-Middlesex riding seat.

If the Liberals don’t form the next government in Ontario, Crombie said, “The government will hear from us in question period and pushing them every single day that this is very wrong-headed and environmentally not sound.”

Crombie and Burghardt-Jesson received an update from members of Dresden CARED (Citizens Against Reckless Environmental Disposal) regarding the many concerns with a proposed project from Mississauga-based York1 Environmental Waste Solutions Inc., to create an eight-hectare (20-acre) landfill with 1.62 million cubic meters of waste capacity on a 35-hectare (86-acre) site with a maximum fill rate of 365,000 tonnes a year, an average of 1,000 tonnes daily.

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York1 also proposes to develop a regenerative recycling facility at the same site on Irish School Road, about 800 meters from Dresden, to accept as much as 6,000 tonnes a day of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste along with 30,000 tonnes of unprocessed soils.

The landfill hasn’t been used in more than 40 years and Ontario’s environment minister Andrea Khanjin has indicated she will require York1 completed a comprehensive environmental assessment through a filing to the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO).

If an environmental assessment is required, it could set the project back years.

Dresden CARED has done exhaustive research into York1’s proposal, including the potential impact of leachate entering the Sydenham River, which is home to numerous endangered and species at risk, the negative impact on ground water, along with pollution and the impact of hundreds of trucks daily traveling through the area since York1 is seeking to operate 24-hours, seven-days a week.

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Stefan Premdas, chair of the citizen group, told Crombie the Ontario environment minister has the authority to revoke a dormant landfill license, yet she chose to put it to an ERO and make the community comment and “beg” for an environmental assessment to be ordered .

He added all the community group wants is for Khanjin to exercise her judicial right and nix the project.

Premdas pointed to a decade-long fight by the citizen group Oxford People Against the Landfill that helped stop a proposed landfill in Oxford County. He said that opposition led to the creation of Bill 197 by the Doug Ford government that gives municipalities the power to stop new landfills, particularly if they are to be located within 3.5 kilometers of a municipal boundary.

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To see the Ford government not following the spirit of its law is “quite hurtful to our community,” Premdas said.

“The fact that we have to self-actualize and self-educate and self-fund a fight against the province to ask them to do their job as written in the legislation, it’s been a huge pill for us to swallow,” he added.

Dresden CARED treasurer Thomas Peacock said Bill 197 has not even been part of the discussion by the government.

“This is not the right place for this,” he said. “We either want the environmental assessment or we want Bill 197 to kick-in or just have this revoked all together.”

Crombie said the issue is very complex and the rules have changed in a “very positive way that we need to protect our environment.”

She added the rules may have allowed for something like this 25 or 30 years ago, but “we understand better today that we need to protect our farmland . . . and natural environment in a more profound way than we have in the past.”

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