Council seeks to engage public on Dresden-area recycling, landfill project

Seeking to provide more clarity on a Dresden-area recycling and landfill proposal and fight potential misinformation, Chatham-Kent council has tasked staff to see what can be done to engage the public.

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North Kent Coun. Rhonda Jubenville raised the matter at Monday’s meeting, asking what dealings Toronto-area company York 1 Environmental Waste Solutions had with Chatham-Kent officials in recent years.

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Bruce McAllister, general manager of community development, said there were “high level” discussions in 2022, but no further details or presentations to council.

Last week, Mayor Darrin Canniff and council wrote Ontario Environment Minister Andrea Khanjin, asking that York1’s project be rejected or at least face the closer scrutiny of a full environmental assessment.

Chatham-Kent is preparing its submissions to the province about the project, with a staff report to council expected in April, McAllister added.

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York1 plans to amend existing provincial permits on the 35-hectare (86-acre) site of a dormant waste disposal facility at 29831 Irish School Rd. (formerly Highway 21) to include a regenerative recycling facility to accept up to 6,000 tonnes a day of non-hazardous solid waste, including construction and demolition waste and excess soil, for beneficial reuse.

The company also has a second application to amend the landfill permit to create an eight-hectare (20-acre) landfill with a maximum fill rate of 365,000 tonnes a year, an average of 1,000 tonnes a day.

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On Friday, hundreds of residents attended an open house with York1 officials in Dresden.

North Kent Coun. Jamie McGrail urged the public to continue to provide feedback. “We all need to make sure that we’re heard,” she said.

Wallaceburg Coun. Aaron Hall suggested creating an online Let’s Talk Chatham-Kent page to engage residents, given the flow of information expected in coming months.

“Personally, I think that would be a good idea,” he said.

Chief administrator Michael Duben said it was possible, but endorsed that it’s the proponent’s project, not the municipality’s.

“What we can do is comment on what we do know,” he said. “Soon we’ll be in a position where we have our submissions to the province. That can also be (online).”

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Duben noted it would be challenging for Chatham-Kent to host an in-person public meeting and “put staff in front of people who have all these questions that the proponents have the answers to.

“It’s not that we don’t want to be transparent. We just don’t have the answers.”

Chatham Coun. Alysson Storey said the community was desperate for more information, calling the frustration “exceedingly high” in the room at Friday’s open house.

“These folks deserve answers … Even that limited information I think these folks deserve to hear in a public forum,” she said.

In a previous interview, George Kirchmair, a York1 vice-president, said the company hasn’t had a chance to make submission to council.

“We haven’t been asked to make a submission to council, but we certainly have talked to the mayor and we’ve talked with councilors and we’ve talked to staff,” he said.

Discussions early on “definitely did not have any of the (project) design parameters,” but there were discussions about seeking a host community agreement, he said.

“We talked about the landfill and we also subsequently talked about our plans to make it a multi-use, multi-purpose waste management facility,” he added.

With files from Ellwood Shreve

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