Trucks coming from Sarnia are expected to go down Oil Heritage Road, through six Lambton communities

Heather Wright/The Independent

It appears York1 has scaled back the size of its project on the outskirts of Dresden.

But Lambton County will still see increased traffic, particularly on Oil Heritage Line.

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent held a public meeting in Dresden Wednesday to give about 100 people the information it has gathered as the Mississauga company prepares its plans for the former dump and gears up for a legal battle with Chatham-Kent.

Two years ago, company’s plans to bring up to 700 trucks a day to the Irish School Road Site near the Lambton border and build a 20-acre landfill on the site became public. While there was a dump on the site, it covered a fraction of the 80-acre property during its heyday. York1 plans what it calls a “regenerative recycling” operation which brings in construction waste and soil for recycling and will expand the landfill to 20 acres.

The company’s proposal on the Environmental Registry of Ontario in 2024 said about 7,000 tonnes of waste would be making its way to the Dresden site – about 700 trucks a day.

But recently, Chatham-Kent received a traffic impact study from York1’s consultant which showed it now plans to bring about 3,000 tonnes of waste per day using 200 trucks – about 20 per hour.

The traffic study by UrbanTrans Engineering Solutions also gives a better idea of where the waste will come from; mostly London, Windsor and Sarnia according to maps included in the traffic study.

The consultants report lays out the routes the trucks would take; about 60 per cent of the trucks would come down Highway 401 to the Victoria Road turn-off. About 120 trucks per day will then travel through the community of Thamesville’s downtown north to Dresden.

York1’s truck route bypasses downtown Dresden. Instead, the trucks will head north on Dawn Mills Road and turn left on Croton Line to get to Irish School Road, where the site is just a few hundred metres from the corner.

Trucks from Windsor – estimated to be about 30 per cent of the traffic or about 60 trucks each day – will travel east on the 401 from Windsor, take the Kent Bridge Road exit, travel through the community, over Longwood’s Road, to BaseLine (Highway 21) and then avoid Dresden taking Dawn-Mills Road and Croton Line.

The trucks heading to the Dresden site from Sarnia will take Highway 402 to Oil Heritage Road, which leads to York1’s doorstep while going through Reece’s Corners, Wyoming, Petrolia, Oil City, Oil Springs and Rutherford. York1’s traffic study estimates about 20 trucks a day will use that route.

During the annual road restriction period of March to April 30, Lambton county will see even more of the traffic with London’s 120 trucks a day getting off the 401 at Rodney, snaking through Wardsville, Glencoe down Dundonald Road to Alvinston where the road becomes Courtright Line at Nauvoo Road, going all the way to Oil City where it will head south on Oil Heritage Line to the landfill outside of Dresden.

The engineers from UrbanTrans Engineering Solutions say according to Ministry of Transportation standards, the company will not require a right or left turn lane at the site with the increased traffic.

Dave Taylor, Chatham-Kent’s Deputy CAO, says they’ve asked York1 directly for more information about their plans, without success. “We asked York1 “could you at least just tell the community what you’re proposing; describe the proposal to us.’ We have really had them say to us ‘you’ll see it, and we submit it to the province.'”

The traffic study suggest those documents should be ready by mid-summer.

Taylor adds it isn’t clear how much input the public will have.

Chatham-Kent is heading to court in September to force York1 to go through its planning process. Emily Crawford, Chatham-Kent’s director of legal services, says the company believes it can legally use the site as a landfill since it had been used for landfilling in the past. Decades ago, some municipal waste from Dresden was diverted to the site. It was mostly used to dispose of ash from the community’s incinerator. Then, as now, the site on Irish School Road could only accept 75 tonnes of waste a day.

Crawford says the municipality will argue that “any of the historic uses that have happened on this property are vastly different from what you were proposing” and the zoning “never intended to allow you to have a massively expanded use.”

Both Crawford and Bruce McAllister, director of developmental services for the municipality, were blunt about what could happen despite Chatham-Kent’s best efforts to manage York1’s plans.

“The province can decide at any point in time how property owners can use their land,” Crawford said, adding the minister could step in at any point and say”that this property has sufficient zoning to go ahead based on the proposed uses. We always have that sort of hovering above us.”

McAllister says York1 may ask for a Ministerial Zoning Order. “They may want to circumvent this whole process. Doesn’t mean the province wouldn’t necessarily do it. They’d have to consider it.”

An MZO would override any local decision and is normally used when the request is about a provincial priority. The Ford government has already outlined the importance of increasing landfill space once. After the 2025 election, the government reneged on a promise to have a full Environmental Assessment of the site which can take 10 years.

The Environmental Registry of Ontario posting announcing the York1 project would go through the Environmental Compliance Approval process instead said the move was “to help provide additional waste capacity in Ontario due to the threat of US tariffs impacting Ontario’s waste sector.”