As Lando said in the Empire Strikes Back…
You might remember hearing back in September that Waste Management applied to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for permission to bring construction and demolition waste from Quebec to the landfill facility on Carp Road.
A number of people in the community, me included, raised concerns about the impact this would have, including increased truck traffic and a slide down a slippery slope in regards to waste transfer between jurisdictions.
Even the City of Ottawa has raised the red flag.
“The City is concerned that this request for a service area change is a significant variance from the service area intended in the recently completed Environmental Assessment (EA) for this facility,” wrote Kevin Wylie, the city’s general manager of public works and environmental services, in a letter to the Ministry of the Environment (MOE).
“At no point over the past ten years of this project… did WM consult the public regarding accepting waste from western Quebec,” he wrote. (Wylie’s full letter is included below.)
Last week, Waste Management received approval to accept waste from a large area of Western Quebec including the Outaouais, Abitibi-Temiscaming and Laurentides regions.
The MOE says the service area change won’t require a new EA because the approval only applies to the facility’s transfer station, not the actual landfill. In other words, the waste material will get shipped in by truck from Quebec, sorted at the Carp Road landfill, and then trucked away to another dump.
Since most of the garbage will be coming from West Quebec, it likely means more truck traffic crossing the interprovincial bridges and travelling through Ottawa’s downtown.
There is a small window to appeal the decision. Members of the public have until March 21 to request a hearing by Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT).
- UPDATE / MARCH 17: City will appeal MOE decision on Carp landfill service area
- UPDATE / MARCH 22: UPDATE: Waste Management “taking steps to review” Quebec garbage application
I can only wonder what other surprises will be in store for when this expanded landfill eventually opens…
(Thanks to Harold Moore & COLA Ottawa for the heads up on this.)