Farmers and consumers are being deceived if they are being told Hamilton’s sewage sludge (biosolids) is safe for application on farmland. On a dry day, everything flushed into the sewer system from residents and industry ends up at the Wastewater Treatment Facility. Dilution is not the way to eliminate chemicals and metals.

Incineration of this material is coming. Liberty Energy, after years of seeking approvals from the environment ministry and from its neighbours, will build an incinerator in an industrial area to burn sludge mixed with clean wood to produce electricity. This is a better than land application.

But we don’t understand why we need two sludge incinerators in our community. On Sept. 16, Hamilton council quietly passed a recommendation to construct a $90-million incinerator at the Wastewater Treatment Facility, 109 metres from the closest home. We were told this project is part of the Biosolids Master Plan that had years of public consultation. The problem is they didn’t inform the hundreds of families that live around the plant until last June and little information was provided. This proposed incinerator will not produce renewable energy.

The question remains, why do we need two sludge incinerators within a kilometre of each other? Why can’t we send our four trucks a day to Liberty and spend the $90 million on existing sewer infrastructure? During a heavy rain, raw sewage flows into our harbour and homes flood. Why not fix that?

City-owned Hamilton Utility Corp. wants to build a garbage incinerator on Pier 22. That will give us three incinerators in a one-kilometre radius. Aren’t we special?

The Biosolids Master Plan logo is “Hamilton; Water is life.” Maybe it should be “Hamilton, home of waste incineration.”