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$1.25 GST included Serving the communities of Blyth and Brussels and northern Huron County Thursday, May 5, 2011
Volume 27 No. 18
SPECIAL - Pg. 11‘Citizen’ guide to springhome and garden FESTIVAL - Pg. 31 Workshop for Festivalopener held in BlythTRANSCAN- Pg. 6Walton event wins tourism awardPublications Mail Agreement No. 40050141 Return Undeliverable Items to North Huron Publishing Company Inc., P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, ON N0G 1H0INSIDE THIS WEEK:
Morris-Turnberry to maximize landfill area
Lobb wins big, Conservatives gain majority
Blue Monday
The Conservative Party of Canada certainly painted the country blue on Monday night scoring
an overwhelming majority victory with 167 seats in the House of Commons. One of the biggest
winners was incumbent Conservative Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb, finishing with over 15,000
more votes than the riding’s second-place finisher Grant Robertson of the NDP. Lobb
supporters gathered at the Candlelight Restaurant in Goderich on Monday night to celebrate
the victory with the man behind the campaign and his wife Andrea, both seen here receiving
congratulations from Conservative supporters. (Shawn Loughlin photo)
Morris-Turnberry councillors have
set their engineers the task of getting
the maximum use of the approved
area of the Morris landfill site
without having to go to expensive
engineered controls.
Councillors elected in last fall’s
municipal election had been
expressing their feelings for months
that the next stage of landfill
development was not ambitious
enough. The Stage I/II portion of the
site had recently received approval
from the Ministry of Environment
and the engineers had suggested it
would have a capacity to accept
seven years’ worth of garbage at the
current rate of use.
When Kent Hunter and Joy
Rutherford of R. J. Burnside &
Associates appeared at the April 28
meeting of council, Councillor John
Smuck said seven years wasn’t very
long when it had taken seven years
to get approval for the newest phase
of the landfill.
But Rutherford said part of the
reason the approval took so long was
because there seemed to be no
urgency in switching from the
portion of the landfill currently in
use until 2007 when chloride levels
in monitoring wells at the current
site suddenly spiked and the
possibility that leachate might go off
the site had to be considered.
Landfills must confine any
leachate to their own site or purchase
lands which might be affected, or at
least the groundwater rights to
affected lands, she said.
The newly-approved section of the
landfill is located northwest of the
currently-used cell in an area where
leachate can be prevented from
leaving the site, she explained.
In questioning from councillors,
Hunter said it would possible to
relocate roadways and groundwater
ponds within the newly-approved
area to make greater use of the
available space.
Gary Pipe, public works co-
ordinator, told councillors that he
thinks it will be possible to extend
the life of the new landfill area once
they start using it because it will be
easier to do better job of compacting
the garbage each week.
He also said many people are still
throwing recycleable materials into
their garbage and ways to prevent
that, such as the clear garbage bags
some municipalities use, would add
years to the life expectancy of the
landfill site.
Asked how soon the new area of
the landfill could be in use, Hunter
said it could be done as quickly as
the new area was developed. Among
the options for reducing the cost of
this was using municipal staff or
going to a specific contractor to do
the work.
Councillors were concerned about
the cost R. J. Burnside & Associates
quoted for preparing tenders to go to
a competitive bidding system:
$10,000 for the closing of the
current portion of the landfill and
$30,090 for Stage I/II. The
company’s proposed budget for
working for the municipality for the
year is $108,117, but Hunter pointed
out that the expenses may not be that
high – the company spent only 60
per cent of the budget last year.
Council approved the budget after
removing the items for development
of tenders and development of a
waste management strategy, taking a
total of $61,000 out of the budget.
Councillors then approved a
motion instructing the engineers to
prepare a plan to maximize use of
the approved area of the Morris
landfill site without using expensive
engineered controls such as a
leachate-control liner, which
the engineers said could cost
$600,000.
On May 1 at approximately 5:30
p.m. Huron OPP officers were called
to a fire in Brussels.
Upon arrival, the Brussels Fire
Department began extinguishing a
fire that had been set on the sidewalk
on Turnberry Street approximately
50 feet from JR’s Gas Bar.
While investigating the fire,
officers determined that the person
who set the fire had set another one
previously, but one of the neighbours
had put it out with a bucket of water.
The second fire subsequently got out
of control so the fire department was
called.
As a result, Neil McTaggart, 73, of
Brussels was arrested and charged
with one count of Mischief under
$5,000. He will answer to his charge
in the Ontario Court of Justice in
Goderich on June 16.
On a night of historic change
throughout the country, the top of the
Huron-Bruce race looked rather
familiar with incumbent MP Ben
Lobb retaining his seat in Ottawa by
a landslide.
It took just one hour after the polls
closed at 9:30 p.m. on Monday night
for Lobb to be declared the winner in
Huron-Bruce, as it appeared he’d be
running away with the seat very
early in the night.
At 10:25 p.m. results were called
in that declared Lobb the winner in
Huron-Bruce.
Lobb finished the night with
28,922 votes, 54.74 per cent of the
Huron-Bruce vote.
Not since Murray Cardiff’s victory
in 1984, Lobb said in his victory
speech, had there ever been such a
lopsided victory in the area. Cardiff
received 60 per cent of the total vote
that year.
Lobb finished over 15,000 votes
ahead of the second-place finisher
Grant Robertson of the NDP, who
finished with 13,417 votes. Coming
in third was Liberal Charlie Bagnato
with 8,784, followed by Green Party
newcomer Eric Shelley with 1,455
and independent Dennis Valenta
who finished with 254 votes.
Lobb chalked the victory up to
hard work and an exhaustive
schedule of knocking on doors and
meeting people, the same formula he
said won him the last election over
Liberal Greg McClinchey.
He said that the majority of the
people he spoke with didn’t think
there had to be an election this year
and that was one of the key points to
his victory, he said.
Spirits were high at the Lobb
camp, which congregated at the
Candlelight Restaurant in Goderich
on Monday night, not only as Lobb
was able to keep his seat in historic
fashion, but as his party’s leader,
Stephen Harper pulled off a majority
government, something Canada
hasn’t seen in years.
It was also a night for a seismic
shift in Canadian party politics, as
the New Democratic Party surged to
an unprecedented number of seats,
passing its previous mark by nearly
four dozen, taking over for the
Liberals as the official opposition.
On a federal level, the
Conservatives won 167 seats to the
NDP’s 102, with the Liberals falling
to just 34 seats. The Bloc Quebecois
handed dozens of seats to the NDP,
ending the night with just four seats
in Quebec and history was made
with the Green Party, as leader
Elizabeth May became the party’s
first elected MP in Canadian history.
Lobb said that he and the rest of
the Conservative Party had seen
early trends going the NDP’s way, so
to see the party win so many seats
from the Bloc Quebecois and the
Liberals didn’t surprise him very
much.
“I’m very happy with the results,”
he said. “This is a real change, it’s a
real change in the fabric of Canada.
“This is a reflection of the party’s
platform and the work we’ve done in
Huron-Bruce over the last two
years.”
Shortly after 11 p.m., after Lobb
had been declared the winner of
Huron-Bruce and Harper’s majority
government had been officially
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Continued on page 32
By Keith Roulston
The Citizen
Charges laid after
fire near gas bar