The Independent

Several hundred Dresden and Walpole Island residents and supporters from as far away as Port Glasgow formed a human chain to protest the plans to revive the Dresden Dump.

People lined Irish School Road in front of York1 property. The company plans to turn the former dump into a construction waste and soil recycling centre as well as creating a 20-acre landfill.

The line of people stretched into Dresden and past the high school which is only a few hundred meters from the gates of the landfill.

They were calling for the province to repeal the Unleashing the Economy which, in part, allows York1 to move ahead with the project without a full Environmental Assessment. That was promised to the people of Dresden by the Premier. He later rescinded the promise saying the trade threats coming from the US required the project to move ahead quickly.

Earlier in the week, the Dresden residents had some back up from municipalities across Ontario. The President of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, Robin Jones, sent the Minister of the Environment a letter saying the group is “concerned about the precedent” set when the province said the project didn’t need an Environmental Assessment.

Jones pointed out just five years ago, the government passed legislation requiring landfill proponents to obtain municipal support for their projects. Chatham-Kent is opposed to the Dresden plan.

“Addressing Ontario’s landfill pressures requires a dual approach: responsibly creating more
landfill capacity while simultaneously taking concrete action to reduce the volume of waste
entering landfills,” Jones wrote