Heather Wright/The Independent

Lambton County mayors are voicing concern about a plan to bring transports with garbage through the middle of several communities.

York1 Environmental is turning a derelict dump on the outskirts of Dresden to a construction and soil waste recycling centre. It’s also rebuilding a landfill which used to be used for ash from Dresden’s incinerator. The Mississauga company plans to build a 20-acre landfill to modern specification.

Originally, the company said it would bring up to 700 trucks per day to the site. A recent traffic study provided by York1 to the Municipality of Chatham-Kent shows the company now plans to bring 200 trucks a day to the site.

The waste will come mostly from London and Windsor, with about 10 per cent originating from Sarnia, according to the plan. The transport trucks carrying the waste will travel down Highway 402 to Oil Heritage Line and move through Reece’s Corners, Wyoming, Petrolia, Oil City, Oil Springs and Rutherford as it heads to Dresden.

Plympton-Wyoming Mayor Gary Atkinson heard about the plan to bring the transports through Wyoming by reading The Independent.

“It kind of bothers me that nobody has had the opportunity to communicate with us, and I’m not sure at what level, whether it’s at the county level, provincial level, or where, but this was brought forth by one of my fellow councillors a few months ago, and to see it back in the newspaper without any communication to us kind of bothers me,” Atkinson said during the July 2 county council meeting.

“We have a lot going on, for example, through Wyoming – it’s going through the core of our business section, and I’m concerned about the traffic and the amount of traffic that’s going through,” Atkinson added.

Jason Cole, general manager of infrastructure services, says Lambton County has not heard directly from York1. “We have received a traffic and routing study that the Municipality of Chatham Kent had provided to us in advance of their presentation to the community last week,” he says.

“We are looking at that and have endeavored to join with them on further discussions regarding routing of that project the way it stands now through their community and ours. We look forward to get together with them to have our own opportunity to review that and provide comments back.”

Dawn-Euphemia Mayor Al Broad also expressed concern saying he wants to know exactly how many trucks are heading down the highway. “Ten per cent of 200 trucks a day is a lot different than 10 per cent of the 700 trucks a day that they were asking for previous. Unfortunately, we don’t know whether it’s a 200 or whether it’s a 700. Ten per cent of 200 lot different than the 10 per cent of 700,” Broad said.

And he’s not hopeful Lambton County will get any clarity about the amount of trucks anytime soon.

“Don’t expect York1 to send you any information. If you want any information, you got to track it down yourself, because York1 isn’t doing a very good job with information.

“To be quite honest, you can blame a lot of the Province of Ontario because they did not want the Environmental Assessment done, and this is what happens now. You get little bits and pieces of information.”