Sludge Watch ==> London raises sink over Toronto Trash - Sludge

[Maureen Reilly]

Published: September 30. 2006 3:00AM \
Metro Detroit, Detroit Free Press
Canadians raise stink over where to take their trash

September 30, 2006

BY TINA LAM

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Related links:

  a.. . MAP: Green Lane Landfill (PDF)

Toronto Mayor David Miller's plan to buy a landfill near London, Ontario, to dump his city's household trash has unleashed howls of outrage.

Miller would start sending Toronto trash there in 2011, when it must stop coming to Michigan.

A London city councilwoman has threatened to put up tollbooths or block roads to the dump. Furious locals said the area would turn into a giant dumping ground. Local mayors are complaining that millions of tons of faraway garbage would be shoved down their throats, with trash trucks traveling at all hours on their roads. The garbage could even include gooey sewage sludge.

Welcome to our world.

Toronto has dumped its trash at the Carleton Farms landfill in Wayne County for years, filling up local roads with as many as 120 truckloads of household trash every day.

Trucks come and go at all hours. Until August, Toronto's sewage sludge got delivered to Carleton Farms, creating a stink that drifted for miles. The sludge has stopped but because it oozes under regular trash dumped on top of it, it still has an overpowering odor, neighbors in Huron Township say.

Londoners aren't even getting Toronto's trash for another four years.

Until then, it's still coming to Michigan.

"So it's OK for us to have it but not them," said Traci Brewer, who lives near Carleton Farms. "I feel for them. I understand what they're going to go through."

Toronto needs a new home for its trash by 2011 after U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, both Michigan Democrats, worked out a deal to end shipments of Ontario's household trash to Michigan by then. Even so, only one-third of Canada's trash trucks will be halted because the rest is commercial trash unaffected by the agreement.

"Toronto's trash should never have gone to Michigan, but it shouldn't come here either," Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said Friday. "The largest city in Canada should deal with its waste in its own backyard."

Contact TINA LAM at 313-222-6421 or tlam at freepress.com.
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