Council (again) urges province to find solution to Toronto trash

Once again Wards 3 and 4 Regional Councillor Jane Fogal called on the provincial government to come up with a waste management strategy for Toronto-area garbage. "It's a provincial concern and we're not seeing anything yet," she said at a recent council meeting. "As time goes on here, well, they say they have emergency capacity. Guess where it is? It's got to be in an existing landfill. Where else could be it? It's definitely a threat." In the fall, Halton Hills and Halton Region became alarmed when Toronto, Peel, York and Durham regions asked the Province to locate Ontario landfills to dump their garbage-- with or without the permission of of the current landfill owners. The crisis is looming because Michigan has passed legislation preventing foreign trash from being shipped to locations within its borders-- the GTA garbage is currently trucked to that state. The state is now awaiting the U.S. Congress to pass legislation allowing the international ban. "The Halton Waste Management Site (HWMS), the closest site with capacity to the Toronto area, is viewed as a potential dumping ground. The development of the HWMS began 20 years ago and currently has 17 years of its 30-year life span remaining, at a total cost to the Halton taxpayers of $120 million. If the region's industrial/commerical waste was taken to the HWMS, instead of being currently shipped to the U.S., that lifespan shortens to seven years. If HWMS is forced to take the GTA residential garbage that lifespan shortens to three years and to only one year if GTA industrial/commercial trash is added. Fogal praised a letter of support written by Wellington MPP Ted Arnott to Premier Dalton McGuinty asking for his guarantee that Toronto waste will not be sent to Halton. She also noted the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has offered solutions including a deposit-return system-- a suggestion which the Town of Halton Hills circulated among municipalities last year. "I hope with this amount of pressure the Province will take note and come up with a strategy because we need one in a desperate sort of way," Fogal. Mayor Rick Bonnette said that the Province is not shy about becoming a "new planner at the table" with its Places to Growth document projecting 780,000 people in the Halton Region. "They're talking about roads, they're talking about transit systems, they're talking about everything but there is not one component about waste management," said Bonnette, "and that is a cost of growth. It's totally ignored.