Sludge Watch ==> Toronto - City weighs its options in search of landfill

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060602.SLUDGE02/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/

City weighs its options in search of landfill
JENNIFER LEWINGTON

CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF; With reports by Jeff Gray and Oliver Moore

Toronto says it may need help from the province to find a home for the 
city's 13 to 15 trucks a day of sewage sludge now going to Michigan.

But it will take several days before Toronto knows what help it needs now 
that a Michigan landfill operator says it won't take the city's treated 
human sewage after Aug. 1.

"We have no specific request of the province until we work through the 
various options," said Lou Di Gironimo, general manager of Toronto water, 
which sends about 160,000 metric tonnes of sewage sludge to Carleton Farms, 
on the outskirts of Detroit. Republic Services, which owns the landfill, 
also takes Toronto's solid waste there.

Ministry of Environment spokesman John Steele, whose department regulates 
where sewage sludge can be sent, said "we await a proposal" from the city.

Yesterday, Toronto officials remained confident they can find new sites by 
Aug. 1. But politicians in and outside the city staked out their ground to 
guard against the smelly goo going to their community.

Deputy mayor Sandra Bussin (Beaches-East York), whose ward includes 
Ashbridges Bay treatment plant, is fighting any suggestion, however faint, 
that the site's three mothballed sludge incinerators could be fired up 
again.

"We would fight it to the nth degree," she said. "We have had our share of 
dirty air."

If the province were to direct Toronto sludge to Halton's landfill site, 
local MPP Ted Chudleigh said, "I would be chained to the Halton landfill 
door and not let the sludge through the gate."

Toronto
Globe and Mail

June 2,2006

Halton Region chairwoman Joyce Savoline is equally opposed.

"Accepting waste from the GTA is not acceptable to us," she said. "This 
isn't about whether or not we want it in our site, it's about a site that 
physically can't take this material from the GTA."

Toronto Councillor Mike Del Grande, a member of the works committee, is 
scathing that the city has no solutions for the short or long term. "We have 
no plan."

Former works committee chairwoman Jane Pitfield said the city needs to find 
its own answers. "We can't foist our sludge on anyone."

Meanwhile, Michigan opponents of Toronto sludge are pleased that it is no 
longer welcome. People who live near the controversial dump have long 
complained that sludge, transported in open-top trucks covered only by a 
tarp, creates some of the worst smells.