NAPANEE — It was a good news-bad news day for people on both sides of the Richmond Landfill fight.

Waste Management announced Wednesday it is bringing forward a proposal to shut down the current Richmond Landfill — the good news.

But, for some, the bad news followed.

Waste Management also announced a new “multi-purpose waste management facility,” to be called the Beechwood Road Environmental Centre, that would feature a new landfill, as well as a waste diversion operation. A component of the new landfill would include the generation of up to six megawatts of electricity from captured landfill gases and the construction of greenhouses on the property, heating units for which would be fuelled by the captured gas.
The Beechwood Road proposal is the second time in a decade that Waste Management has attempted to expand its facilities there. The proposal was previously turned down by the Ministry of the Environment.

Site manager Randy Harris said the new proposal is substantially different from the original plan.

“It’s a whole new project, with all these diversionary and recycling facilities to take everything out of the garbage that can be taken out, before the residuals that can’t be recycled are put into the new state-of-the-art landfill,” Harris said. “What’s really different about this project than the last time out is the last time it was just a large landfill. This time, the landfill is just one component of a facility that would focus on diversion, recycling, recovery and reuse.”

If approved, it would be built in stages and the landfill would accept 400,000 tonnes of waste a year for a period of 20 years. It would be constructed just to the north of the current landfill.

The first open house takes place next Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Napanee Legion.

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Both Harris and Wes Muir, director of corporate communications for Waste Management, say they understand that despite all the plans for recycling and waste diversion and creation of energy from landfill gases, opponents will likely focus in on the new landfill being proposed.

“If they’re focusing on the landfill, it’s going to be state-of-the-art. It’s not a 50-year-old landfill we’re talking about here,” said Harris. “People were focused on the current landfill. It will be closed and capped and monitored. This is going to be brand new, and its going to protect the environment, and we can stand up for that. We can rightfully tell people that it will not be environmentally incorrect. It will be done properly, and it will be monitored properly.”

Both Harris and Muir said the issue of fractured limestone and the possible effects a new landfill could have on the water table has been addressed in a recent $1-million study, which is available on the Waste Management website.

Harris said the proposed redevelopment would create 75 jobs, and contribute $1 million in economic benefits to the local economy.

It didn’t take long for opponents of the proposed expansion to make their voices heard.

Ian Munro, a Napanee resident, and a member of the Concerned Citizens of Tyendinaga and Environs said Wednesday by phone, “I’m delighted to hear Waste Management has finally acknowledged they have to close the existing dump. That’s fantastic news. Better late than never.

“I am quite appalled at the prospect of them making the same mistake they’ve already made by putting yet another dump out there, given everything they’ve done in the past. It confirms what we’ve thought about the company for years, that they really don’t care about the environment and the people that live here, that they really only care about their own interests.”

Munro pointed to some studies that have indicated there is a problem with leachate in the groundwater.

“I’m expecting another decade-long discussion of whether we should put more garbage on a site that the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario says is possibly the worst site in Ontario. Common sense tells you that. You don’t need to be a geologist to know this is not wise, especially when you look at the fact it’s going to be hundreds of years, if not millennia, before the danger passes. It’s the wrong place to put garbage.”

His comments were echoed by Tyendinaga resident Mike Bossio, another outspoken opponent of the former landfill expansion proposal.

“What I don’t understand is when you talk to anyone else out there in the waste industry, you don’t build a dump on fractured limestone — period. You can build the safest dump in the world, and it doesn’t change the geology of the dump,” said Bossio.

“Every dump leaks. That’s what people have to understand. They’ve shown that over and over again. The (American Environmental Protection Agency) has done studies and even landfills they thought weren’t leaking, were leaking. These dumps are with us not for 10 years, or 30 years, but for 300 years.”

To find out more about the proposed project, the public can attend the March 10 meeting or visit http://brec.wm.com