Heather Wright/The Independent

The province is planning more changes to the rules for landfills and it has some Lambton politicians worried.

Landfill operators and the province estimate there is about six years of landfill capacity left in the province with few major projects in the works. It takes up to a decade to approve a new landfill right now.
One solution the Conservative government has suggested is allowing existing landfills to accept more waste.

April 22, the province posted the changes to the Environmental Registry of Ontario saying they “would allow operators more flexibility to change the area where the waste comes from – the service area – and to change the rate at which they can accept it –the fill rate,” according to the document.

The ERO proposal from the Ministry of Environment, Parks and Conservation says right now, if a landfill operator wants to change either the amount of waste accepts or where it comes from, there are two processes – the Environmental Compliance Approval and the Environmental Screening Process – they must go through.

The Environmental Screening Process includes consultation with government agencies, Indigenous communities and the public, looks at mitigation for potential negative impacts, includes a report which is made public and sent out for a 60-day review period. The ministry can use the report to require a full Environmental Assessment.

The Environmental Compliance Approval process is managed by the ministry, gathers technical data on emissions, noise and mitigation strategies, the ministry’s technical staff reviews the application and the project is placed on the ERO for public review.

“Typically, changes to the service area or fill rate have limited or no environmental impacts,” the ministry said in its justification for the proposal.

The MECP is proposing to “simplify” the requirements by only using the Environment Compliance process.

And it wants to limit public input.

The province is proposing to exempt requests for increased fill rate and service area request from being places on the Environmental Register as required by law right now.

“This would mean that ECA amendment proposals for service area and fill rate changes would not be required to be posted on the ERO, and would remove third-party rights to seek leave to appeal ECA decisions for these amendments,” the proposal says.

That worries Dawn-Euphemia Mayor Al Broad.

York1 Environmental is working on a project on the municipality’s borders which would see the former Dresden dump turned into a construction and soil waste recycling centre and would rebuild a landfill on site.

The company first suggested it would see 700 trucks a day at the Irish School Road Site near the Lambton border accepting 6,000 tonnes of waste a day.

The current ECA allows just 75 tonnes a day.

“I don’t like that idea. I don’t that they’re pulling more the environmental rules away from the landfills all the time, and not giving the public any voice,” said Broad.

“It looks like to me, they’re trying to reduce all the red tape so that they can just put them wherever they want, or increase the size or increasing catchment area.”

York1 is still working on the amount of waste the Dresden site could take with the MECP. Broad worries what these proposed changes would mean for the project.

“What they’re saying is going to happen could all definitely change,” says Broad.

Warwick Mayor Todd Case is also concerned.

WM is about to submit is Environmental Assessment final report to the province in June for a 1.4 million vertical expansion of Watford’s Twin Creeks landfill.

While Case doesn’t expect the proposal would affect that project, he believes the changes could affect the site in the future.

And Case says the current process allows companies to ask for more tonnage without a full environmental review now. “There is a process they have to go through which is already weaker, way weaker than any EA process,” he said, adding Warwick has asked to be changed.

The changes to the amount of waste coming to a landfill and where it comes from can affect a community and municipalities should have input, the mayor says.

“It’s not just the traffic, it’s the odour, it’s the noise, it’s the dust impacts. There’s a variety of things that impact the community when it comes to being host to a large landfill,” he said.

Case says the townships technical review team, which monitors the changes to the WM site, is looking at the province’s latest proposal to determine the affect on the municipality.

The Environmental Register of Ontario will accept public comment on the proposed changes until June 8.