Heather Wright/The Independent

York1 Environmental promised to cut the amount of construction and soil recycling materials coming to the Dresden dump in half.

That promise was made through the Environmental Registry of Ontario during the province’s bid to place a full Environmental Assessment on the Irish School Road property last spring.

It’s coming to light now as documents in a court challenge by the company to the EA surface.
The province placed the requirement for a full Environmental Assessment on the site last June after an outcry from residents and politicians in Dresden, Chatham-Kent and Lambton. By July, York1’s lawyers had applied for a Judicial Review of the decision.

Kristi Ross and Matthew Patterson of the Toronto law firm Aird & Berlis LLP said in the filing that York1 was told by the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks before the company bought the land in 2022 that the landfill had a capacity of 1.58 million cubic meters of capacity left on site.

Then, in 2024, the province changed the way it determined what level of environmental review would be required for landfill projects. Not every landfill project, for example, would need a full Environmental Assessment.

York1’s lawyers said in the filing the company’s project would only need to be screened and that only occurred because the company wanted to bring in materials from across Ontario instead of Dresden as the current Environmental Compliance Approval for the site states.

“The amendments to the approvals for the site do not pose a significant enough environmental risk to warrant the more extensive and time consuming comprehensive assessment, but are rather covered by a screening assessment which requires the assessment of environmental impacts and the mitigation of those impacts,” the court filing states.

Ross and Patterson added during the province’s ERO posting about the full Environmental Assessment, the company filed comments saying it was willing to make big changes to avoid the full EA.

York1 said it would operate the site Monday to Saturday from 7 am to 7 pm instead of seven-days-a-week as long as they wanted. That would cut down on noise and traffic, the brief said.

It would take half the recyclables it planned “resulting in 50 per cent less truck traffic.”

York1 also committed to scrapping plans to accept asbestos waste from construction sites and source separate organics “improving safety and removing any odours.”

But York1’s concessions were not enough.

Lawyers say the province’s decision to force an EA “was made in the context of a media campaign based on local opposition intense pressure from the public to stop the project.

“The thrust of this campaign did not relate to genuine environmental issues of the nature that the EA is meant to address.

“Indeed, the project would facilitate waste diversion and recycling, two provincial goals, it would accommodate residual waste in an environmentally sound manner, and would improve upon the existing environmental protections at the site,” Ross and Patterson write.

“Instead, the public concern and opposition was based on misconceptions about the project, including its size, and fears that, though honestly held, bear no relationship to the real environmental impact of the project.”

Throughout the process, environmental groups, politicians and citizens have raised concerns that the project planned by York1 could damage the local watershed, water wells used by neighbours for drinking water and could damage the rare aquatic life in Molly’s Creek which drains into the Sydenham River.

The lawyers believe the public concerns could have been addressed through the screening process which York1 agreed to do.

“The creation of a regenerative recycling facility that will safely process, recycle and divert significant quantities of waste disposal while landfilling a small portion of residual waste is entirely consistent with that purpose and provides for the “betterment of the people of Ontario” and the “conservation and wise management” of Ontario’s environment by supporting waste diversion and conserving landfill capacity, as well as by improving the environmental performance of the existing landfill,” Ross and Patterson wrote in the brief filed in London.

The company also points out the EA was contrary to advice from the ministry which said the Dresden project should go through the ECA process.

Laryssa Waler, spokesperson for York1, says the application had not been heard as Bill 5 was being discussed. When Bill 5 was passed, the company said it would withdraw the request for the judicial appeal.

She added the company did not meet with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks after the paper work was filed nor were their negotiations about the review leading up to the introduction of the bill which will remove the Environmental Assessment designation from the project