The Rural Voice, 1994-11, Page 18Dumped On!
Garbage has to go somewhere but for the unlucky
farmers whose farms are picked as landfill
candidate sites, the world changes overnight,
By Keith Roulston
For Allan Gibson the
politician, April 28, 1994
was a day that held out thc
possibility of being very
unpleasant. That day was when the
latest round of candidate sites for a
Huron County landfill were to be
unveiled and the reaction from those
unlucky enough to be included, was
bound to be stormy.
For Allan Gibson the farmer, the
day would be worse than he could
have imagined.
There was great secrecy involved
in thc disclosure of the sites. County
employees were marshalled early
that morning and given packages to
deliver to each of the landowners
involved. When the report of the
Waste Management committee
began, packages of information were
delivered to county councillors, but
not to the press table. Only when the
actual sites were to be identified were
thc packages delivered to the press so
they couldn't run out and report the
list before it became official and
before some of the landowners found
out through proper channels.
In his seat as Huron County
Warden Allan Gibson, Reeve of
Ashfield Township just outside of
Lucknow, opened his packaged and
sifted through information on the 11
candidate sites, then reacted in shock.
14 THE RURAL VOICE
Part of three of his farms were
included in one of the candidate sites.
Afterward he admitted it was hard
to concentrate on conducting the rest
of the meeting. As the meeting ended
he was handed a note to call his wife.
She had received the package giving
information on how much of the
family's land was involved, and
telling about the meetings that would
be coming up where landowners and
neighbours could ask for more
details. Dozens of others involved in
the 11 sites received that same news
that morning. Unlike Gibson, they
didn't have to be polite about the
issue. They were angry and over the
next few weeks and months they
made it known loud and clear.
Huron County is in the vanguard
of western Ontario counties looking
for landfill sites. Faced with rapidly
diminishing space in municipal
landfill sites in the mid-1980s and the
incredible cost of the process of
finding a new site, municipalities
pressed the county to take on finding
one large landfill that would meet the
county's needs for the next 40 years.
Other counties have been
following the same route but a few
steps back. In Grey County the Grey -
Owen Sound Waste Management
Master Plan study is at "Task 2"
Eric Moore should be on top of the
world on lu's beautiful hilltop, but
Huron County has picked this site as
a possible location for a landfill.
stage, the stage where goals and
plans for waste diversion are set out.
The Task 2 report was to be released
in late October, said Melanie Rapin,
Project Manager. It will set goals of
diverting 43-46 per cent of garbage
from the landfill sites. The Grey -
Owen Sound area has been diverting
only 12-16 per cent in the past,
compared to the provincial average
of 25 per cent in 1992, she says.
There's an urgency in the
search in Grey and Owen
Sound. While combining the
capacities of all 15 landfills in
the county means there is about 12.5
years of capacity left, Owen Sound's
facility, which serves one third of the
population in the study area, has only
five years' capacity left.
Grey County is still in the easy
part of the process. Ahead comes
Task 3, implementation of diversion
policies and Task 4, a 20 -page report
that outlines what, when and how the
site selection will be done. Those
tasks are hopefully to be done by
early 1995. Then the "fun" begins.
Other counties have taken
different approaches. Bruce County