As  a longstanding opponent of the Richmond Landfill, now rebranded ‘The Beechwood Road ENVIRONMRNTAL Centre’, I was not surprised when the MOE announced that they had concluded that the dump was leaking and that they had ordered Waste Management to take remedial action.

The MOE had first declared their concerns more than two years ago and had asked the company to do more detailed investigations across the road from the dump.  It took Waste Management two full years to report. Their conclusion was that the contamination was coming from the long closed Lewis Meats and not coming from their dump. Their report made no proposals to address the problem or to notify the public that there was a risk that toxic leachate may be reaching the aquifers that supply the many houses and farms downstream from the dump.

When the MOE indicated their disagreement with Waste Management’s conclusions their response has been to again deny the risks. While they now acknowledge the difficulty in monitoring leaks in the fractured limestone site, they have reluctantly agreed to initiate contingency measures.

These facts illustrate precisely why this community continues to oppose giving permission to Waste Management to bring garbage from elsewhere in Ontario to build a dump that is a four fold expansion of the Richmond Landfill.  They also illustrate why the Concerned Citizens are taking the issue of adequate monitoring and managing the closed site to Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal.