Environmentalist Comments On Garbage Smell

But he wasn't referring to the odor given off by the garbage but the shenanigans of Mayor Miller, his leftist councillors and the community environmental assessment team (CEAT)

Garbage song and dance
By SUE-ANN LEVY

Environmentalist Rod Muir can't understand why city officials are even bothering with any long-term study of alternative solid waste technologies if Toronto is about to purchase its own landfill site.

I asked Muir, of Waste Diversion Toronto, to comment on the latest status report of the community environmental assessment team (CEAT) created to decide what to do with the portion of city's waste that can't be diverted through the green bin and blue box programs. He gave me an earful.

He said the 20-person team was formed two years ago when the city didn't have a disposal site. Now that it does, it's a "foregone conclusion" what will be done with the city's waste for the next 13 years until the landfill runs out of capacity, he said.

The city is set to close on the $220-million purchase of the Green Lane landfill near St. Thomas on March 29.

Muir feels the money allocated to CEAT (some $1.1-million is being set aside in 2007 alone to pay consultants, legal fees, the team's honoraria and for public consultation) would better be spent on speeding up diversion initiatives -- especially since Mayor David Miller has promised the city will be diverting 70% of its waste from landfill by the time his current term is up in 2010 (the current rate is 42%).

"This study is becoming a substitute for action," Muir said, contending that most of the team is stacked with anti-incineration, downtowners handpicked by the mayor's office.

I would tend to agree with him, especially after speaking with CEAT chairman Phil Knox and new public works committee chairman Glenn De Baeremaeker.

Knox, who delivered his report to the first meeting of the public works committee yesterday, told me CEAT members had 83 meetings from the time they were formed in March of last year and will likely have another 87 meetings this year.

He says the draft Terms of Reference for the environmental assessment -- and another entire round of public consultation -- will be completed by spring or early summer. That's so the public works committee and council can "give it their blessing" and send it to the provincial environment ministry before this fall's election, he said.

He insists they'll be ready despite plans to conduct a $53,000 Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) first -- a study that will establish a protocol to ensure the privacy of everybody that participates in the public consultation.

He also insisted "all options are on the table" including incineration. Yet when asked whether having the landfill alleviates the pressure, he responded that it "has taken out a big chunk of their work."

De Baeremaeker voiced the need to move "full steam ahead" with the terms of reference and reiterated incineration is on the table.

In the last round of public consultation -- held at the end of November -- only 169 people came out to some 11 sessions.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said the sessions were so poorly advertised, he held a special meeting in his ward last Tuesday night.

"One might think they (CEAT) only wish to attract certain people that have their own agenda," he said. "The general public wants to look at incineration ... and they're angry about the landfill site," he said.

Now I don't dispute the whole solid waste issue is like an "onion" -- Knox's response to my queries of what's taking so long. Still I smell yet another City Hall Broadway-type production.

I can't see the terms of reference being approved by the province this year, given that the election is slated for early October and things at Queen's Park will likely wind down in early summer.

Like Muir, I don't believe for a moment either that incineration is on the table with Mayor David Miller and most of his socialist minions adamantly against it.

"This group has no decision-making power," he says. "The whole thing just stinks."