Heather Wright/The Independent

Chatham-Kent officials say the province’s plan to stop an Environmental Assessment of a project at the Dresden dump may be worse than they thought.

Last year, York1 Environmental Waste Services started planning a construction waste recycling facility at the Irish School Road property. It also planned to expand an old landfill on the site. The project could bring up to 6,000 tonnes of waste per day to the dump less than a kilometre from Dresden and Dawn-Euphemia.

After a community outcry, the province agreed to require a full Environmental Assessment of the project – the highest level of environmental investigation. But April 17, the province introduced the Unleashing Our Economy Act. It dropped the requirement for that full Environmental Assessment.

David Taylor, director of legal services, says the proposed legislation “goes further than that.

“It would clarify and provide that this property is not subject to any of the requirements on the Environmental Assessment Act. So if there had been some requirements before, it’s clarified that those won’t be applicable now, and so actually, I would say, this puts us even farther behind where we were before. If it’s revoked, what that really functionally means is the owners are just back to a decision of having to get amendments to their environmental compliance approvals. They’ve already kind of started that work a number of years ago,” Taylor told councillors Monday.

Officials added right now, they’re not certain if the plan put forward in 2024 is still on the table or if more changes have been made to the proposal.

And Taylor is worried about the properties York1 and related companies are buying nearby.

“What’s that for? We don’t have any visibility on right that right now, but we’re absolutely obviously going to be looking into that and pushing that issue as well, because obviously that would expand it even further beyond what they’re already kind of planning. “We need to fight it with everything that we can.”

The municipality, Taylor says, is already working on it. CK has hired one of the province’s top environmental law firms which started looking at York1’s plans last year.

Taylor says the lawyers will be part of a public meeting at the Ken Houston Memorial Arena May 5 at 6 pm to explain some of their concerns and hear from residents.

That was welcome news to the dozens of Dresden residents at the council meeting including Mike Yankovic.

“We understand that we’re facing uncertain economic times and that the Ontario government wants to maintain flexibility to develop our economy domestically, but that should not involve building a dump directly beside our town in our waterways,” he said.

“Our province is big – bigger than the European countries of Germany, Italy and the Netherlands combined. There has to be another place for this dump.

“I encourage council to persevere.”

Taylor says Chatham-Kent is “looking at every single too that we have” to fight the Unleashing the Economy bill.

While they don’t have all the answers yet, Taylor says some of the next phases Chatham-Kent will look at is what legal steps might need to be taken.
“We’ve also reached out to local MPP, we contact the Minister the Environment, (we have) been contacting the Premier’s office.

“(We) know there will be an ongoing and consistent push to oppose this and really make sure that the potential negative impacts on Dresden are well known to those decision makers.”
Taylor also urged residents to make their concerns known to the two MPPs who represent Chatham-Kent, Steve Pinsonneault in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex and Trevor Jones in Chatham-Kent-Leamington.
Taylor said a key tool that municipalities used to have to veto the expansion of a landfill under Bill 197, isn’t available to Chatham-Kent.

“The province has taken is their approach is that, because it was an existing landfill that doesn’t apply,” says Taylor.

Chatham-Kent council has given administration the green light to spend up to $50,000 in the fight to stop York1’s plan.

The municipality has already spent $35,000 on the fight and says $50,000 is likely only the beginning.