The expansion of Twin Creeks Landfill has been approved.
That from Warwick Township Mayor Todd Case. The ruling from the Ministry of the Environment came in September, about a week after the township learned its request for a full-time Ministry of the Environment inspector at the site was turned down even though the company agreed with the plan.
Waste Management began making its case for the expansion of one of Ontario’s biggest landfills in 2016.
It said it would need to be able to put more into the Watford landfill after closing its site near Petrolia.
Case says the ministry agreed giving Waste Management approval to bring up to 1.4 million tonnes of garbage to the site each year. It has yet to reach the 750,000 tonne limit it already has. Case expects that to happen “really quickly – likely by the end of this year.”
The mayor isn’t surprised by the approval saying Waste Management runs a “pretty good site” but he adds “we’ll be watching. We’ll be keeping our eyes on things.”
And he says the municipal government is not about to give up on  its goal of a full-time inspector on site.
“It was good enough the first time around and now were almost doubling the yearly input and its not good enough now?”
The province has agreed to increase inspections from once a month to once a week. Waste Management had offered to pay the wages of the full-time inspector.
Warwick Council is writing letters to the ministry and the Minister of the Environment voicing its concerns about the inspection rate.