Lawsuit threat levelled at county ( great news for these people)
Jul 13th, 2009 | By Debbie Vitez | Section: CommunitySITE 41 OPPONENTS
Posted By DOUGLAS GLYNN
Posted 1 day ago
The battle to stop the North Simcoe Landfill - known as Site 41 - may be headed to the courts.
The Council of Canadians has called on Simcoe County to immediately cease construction activity at the site and has instructed its lawyers “to pursue appropriate legal action, if required, to bring this about.”
In a four-page letter to Warden Tony Guergis and county councillors, lawyers for the citizens’ organization say their client “is determined to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent the pristine groundwater at the site from being despoiled by a waste disposal scheme.” A copy of the letter has also been sent to Environment Minister John Gerretsen. This action by the Council of Canadians - one of the largest civil society groups in Canada - is the latest development in a groundswell of growing opposition to the controversial landfill.
The Free Press tried to obtain a comment from the warden but was unable to do so before press time. The organization’s chair, Maude Barlow, serves as the senior advisor on water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. She is also a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and numerous other international and domestic honours; many in recognition of her commitment to advocate for water as a public trust and human right.
“Given the breadth of its mandate,” says the letter from Steven Shrybman of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, “the Council does not typically become involved with local water protection issues.
“However Site 41 presents such a direct and prominent threat to sound principles of water stewardship and protection that our client has determined that urgent action is required to arrest the threat posed by present waste plans for the Site.”
The letter lists some of the provincial and national groups opposed to Site 41, including Nature Canada, the Green Party of Canada, the (First Nations) Chiefs of Ontario, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Simcoe County Federation of Agriculture, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation and others.
“Moreover,” the letter says, “the Province’s foremost authority on the environment -the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario -has expressed repeated concerns about the Site, and as well about the Ministry of Environment’s approach to issuing, and then refusing to review, the Certificate of Approval for its use as a waste dump.
“The Commissioner has publicly stated that Site 41 would never be chosen or approved as a waste dump today, given what we now know about the importance of source water protection; a lesson painfully brought home by the tragedy at Walkerton.
“We are aware of the considerable time and resources the County has invested in obtaining approval for a waste dump at Site 41. But the costs to the environment, to the County’s reputation, and ultimately to its taxpayers will be far greater if the dump proceeds.”
“In the circumstances, the only prudent choice for the county is to halt construction at the site.”
North Simcoe MPP Garfield Dunlop applauded the action, saying “we need that kind of strength to deal with this issue.
“Site 41 is a mistake! At some point the county and the ministry have to wake up to that fact. Our job (as politicians) is to to listen to the people. They aren’t doing that despite the growing opposition to the impact this landfill will have on a vital water supply.”
The lawyer’s letter to Guergis cites the potential impact of leachate on the ground water and observes, in part:
“There is simply no such thing as a failsafe waste dump. They all leak and continue to do so for many years after the dumping stops. In fact, dumps dating from the Roman Empire are generating leachate and contaminating groundwater today.”
And it raises what it calls “serious questions about the lawfulness of the actions taken by the County and the decisions made by Ministry in regard to Site 41.
“To begin with, it is difficult to regard the Ministry decision to approve a waste dump at this site as reasonable when serious questions about site hydrogeology and other environmental effects remain unresolved.”
The letter cites passage of the Clean Water Act in 2007, noting “a key feature of this legislation concerns source water protection, a priority which is described this way:
“Protecting water at its source is the first step in ensuring that every Ontarian has access to safe drinking water. By stopping contaminants from getting into sources of drinking water -lakes, rivers and aquifers -we can provide the first line of defense in the protection of our environment and the health of Ontarians.
It is impossible, in our view, to reconcile this commitment with the Ministry’s approval of Site 41 as a waste dump. It is also difficult to understand how, in doing so, the Ministry complied with its obligations under s. 11 of the Environmental Bill of Rights, section 11 of which stipulates that:
“The minister shall take every reasonable step to ensure that the ministry statement of environmental values is considered whenever decisions that might significantly affect the environment are made in the ministry.
“The Environmental Bill of Rights also empowers any resident of Ontario to sue to prevent harm to a public resource. Section 84 establishes this right of action:
“Where a person has contravened or will imminently contravene an Act, regulation or instrument prescribed for the purposes of Part V and the actual or imminent contravention has caused or will imminently cause significant harm to a public resource of Ontario, any person resident in Ontario may bring an action against the person in the court in respect of the harm and is entitled to judgment if successful.”
The letter further notes there are also questions of compliance with new species protection law.
“In this regard, it is very problematic that construction of the waste dump is taking place while critical questions remain unanswered about the effect of the dump on ground and surface water in and around Site 41.
“As you know, the entire premise of the Ministry’s approval rests on the assumption that hydraulic gradients at the site are upward, in other words groundwater is expected to flow up and out of the site, therefore ameliorating the risk to groundwater below the site.
“Yet the basis for that assumption is modelling work by a consultant which has not been tested by independent or peer review, or made available to the public in spite of long outstanding requests for access to this critical information.
Furthermore, when access to key information about this scientific modelling evidence was formally sought by a member of the Community Monitoring Committee, the County declined to make it available. That resulted in an appeal to the office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and an Order by an adjudicator that the County obtain this information from its consultant. Yet the County has yet to say whether and when it will make this information public…
“Sooner or later this information will be independently reviewed, and if it turns out that the basis for the Site 41 approval was unsound, the Certificate of Approval for the site must be withdrawn.
“We believe there are compelling public policy reasons for abandoning present plans to dump waste on such an important source of pristine water, and these have been underscored by the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario,” the letter adds.
“Fortunately, there is still time for the county to change course.
“But if it proceeds in a manner that abandons its obligations to steward water as a public trust, and ignores its legal obligations to protect the environment, source waters and species at risk, we are instructed to pursue legal recourse to protect the pristine source and groundwater of Tiny Township from the inevitable and irreparable harm that will result if plans to establish a waste dump at Site 41 proceed,” the letter concludes.
link to story
http://www.midlandfreepress.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1609792
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