Greens call on the province to dump the Ottawa east mega dump

(Ottawa, ON): There are too many unanswered questions about the risks of the Taggart-Miller dump for the province to let it proceed, says GPO leader Mike Schreiner. 

Schreiner has joined with citizens’ groups DumpthisDump2 and DumptheDumpNow in calling on the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to reject the Taggart-Miller landfill project or to send it in its entirety to the Environmental Review Tribunal.

“One of government’s primary responsibilities is to protect citizens from health, safety and environmental risks,” says Schreiner. “There are too many unanswered questions for the Taggart-Miller mega dump to proceed. We are calling on the Liberals to do the right thing and dump this dump.”

The proposed 450 acres Taggart-Miller dump would bring an estimated 12 million tonnes of industrial waste into Ottawa each year. Local organizers with the Dump This Dump Together campaign say the EA fails to address four important environmental concerns. 

1. Surface and ground water – most residents and farmlands rely on their surface wells
2. Leda clay  – The weight of a massive 450 acre landfill on 100 feet of unstable Leda clay poses a significant risk that may allow the dump to pollute the region’s Bear Brook Creek wetland and the shallow wells
3. Leachate – no firm plan in place as to who can take the important amount of leachate
4. Air quality – local residents are concerned with contaminants which will be released by the landfill and particularly more so the elementary school located nearby

Both groups have indicated that Ottawa already has overcapacity for the disposal of industrial, commercial and institutional waste.  “So we know the garbage for the CRRRC will come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere is Toronto.  Who wants Toronto’s industrial waste to contaminate their family’s drinking water?” says Lucie Régimbald of DumpThisDump2. “We don’t want the environmental risks or long-term costs of a 450 acre mega dump.”

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