Chatham-Kent is seeking changes to the wording of an application for a controversial proposed landfill and recycling project north of Dresden to reflect its true scope.
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The request is part of the municipality’s recent filing to the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO) regarding a proposal by Mississauga-based York1 Environmental Waste Solutions.
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York1 has applied 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. The company also proposes to develop a regenerative recycling facility at the same Irish School Road site, about 800 meters from Dresden, to accept up to 6,000 tonnes daily of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste and 30,000 tonnes of unprocessed soils.
The project has drawn fierce opposition from the community and the municipalities of Chatham-Kent and nearby Dawn-Euphemia Township in south Lambton County. There are environmental concerns about possible pollution of the nearby Sydenham River and the impact of hundreds of trucks a day daily coming to the proposed round-the-clock operation.
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Ontario’s Environment Ministry posted a notice to the ERO in late March after Minister Andrea Khanjin tweeted March 15 on X that she’d heard the concerns raised about the proposed project.
As with any proposed landfill, “I will be taking steps to require this project to complete a comprehensive environmental assessment under the Environmental Assessment Act,” she said at that time.
Chatham-Kent’s third ERO filing notes there is limited documentation to a 1980 ministry certificate of approval on the Irish School Road site permitting operation of an eight-hectare landfill. The filing notes it seems the permit was issued to “regularize historic landfill activities” that appear to have begun in 1967.
Documentation indicates there are three existing fill areas on the property of about 0.8, 0.7 and 0.5 hectares (two, 1.75 and 1.25 acres), containing an estimated 40,000 cubic meters of fill material.
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A waste disposal certificate of approval was granted in 1992 to permit processing of scrap wood from the then Kent County and Essex, Elgin, Lambton and Middlesex counties. An amendment to the certificate in 1998 permitted storage, transfer and processing of solid non-hazardous waste within a 0.8-hectare approval area accepting up to 75 tonnes a day, with maximum storage of 75 tonnes. The service area has not changed, the municipality said.
Chatham-Kent’s filing said the waste facilities contemplated by York1’s two applications “would comprise a waste management project on a provincial scale.”
The municipality’s filing requests the wording of “re-establishing” the operation of both a landfill and waste transfer and processing station be removed.
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“The reference to previous landfill and waste processing approval is both unnecessary and misleading,” the municipality claims. “The wording leaves the impression that York1 Landfill and Waste Processing facility are similar in scope and nature to previous uses at the subject land and are simply a continuation and expansion of an existing use.”
This is not the case, the municipality argues, adding the previous landfill is “small facility approved decades ago, with little study.”
York1’s proposed landfill and waste processing facility are fundamentally different in nature to the discontinued small landfill and waste processing activities on the now inactive site, the municipal filing says.
The filing also outlines the need for a full environmental assessment.
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It says the nature of the proposal “gives rise to the need for multi-disciplinary studies to assess the potential environmental impacts of this proposal,” including:
- Air, land and water
- Plant and animal life, including human life
- Social, economic and cultural conditions of the community
- The combined cumulative impacts on the interrelationship between these components and the environment.
“There is no evidence that a systematic decision-making process was undertaken” by York1 to support the proposed waste facilities at this location, Chatham-Kent states.
And there is a lack of information in supporting studies York1 has provided to Chatham-Kent, it adds. “None of these reports references any existing supporting studies in the key potential impact areas of noise, air quality, natural heritage features and function and traffic impacts.”
The municipality also calls York1’s approach to community and municipal engagement for the proposal to date “entirely inadequate,” adding the company’s applications for environmental approval were submitted “without any advance notice, let alone any consultation with local residents and the community.”
York1 did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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