Green Party calls on province to dump the Ottawa East mega dump | Unpublished
Hello!

Unpublished Opinions

Green Party of Ontario's picture
Green Party of Ontario
Toronto, Ontario
About the author

The Green Party of Ontario is independent yet is philosophically aligned with other green parties in Canada and around the world. The GPO is fiscally conservative, socially progressive and environmentally focused, and begins with the basic premise that all life on the planet is interconnected and that humans have a responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world.

The Green Party of Ontario (GPO) became an officially registered political party in 1983, and has been developing in size and sophistication since that time, expanding its membership and rising in the polls. We have increased the number of candidates in successive provincial elections. In the 1999 provincial election, we fielded 58 candidates, and became the fourth largest party in the province. In 2003, we fielded our first nearly-full slate, 102 out of 103 candidates, and received 2.8% of the vote. The 2007 election saw Ontario voters support Green Party values with unprecedented enthusiasm. The GPO, for the first time in history, had a full slate of candidates and garnered over 8% of the vote.

In the 2018 election GPO leader Mike Schreiner became the first Ontario Green to be elected to Queen's Park. The party now has two seats and polls between 4-8%. 

Like it

Have your say!

Green Party calls on province to dump the Ottawa East mega dump

May 16, 2016
(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.”
 
—30—
 
Media Contact:
 
Amy Watson
 

Comments

Be the first to comment