Commentary – No Victory in Trash Deal

Last month (October), Toronto announced that it was backing out of aplan to dump its garbage in an abandoned open pit mine in NorthernOntario. Environmentalists thought they’d won a decade long battle toprotect communities from being dumped on by Canada’s largest city. Butthey were shocked when Toronto officials decided to ship the garbage toMichigan instead. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator SuzanneElston wonders why one community’s victory has to be another community’sdefeat:

Transcript

Last month, Toronto announced that it was backing out of a plan to
dump its garbage in an abandoned open pit mine in Northern Ontario.
Environmentalists thought they’d won a decade long battle to protect
communities from being dumped on by Canada’s largest city. But they
were shocked when Toronto officials decided to ship the garbage to
Michigan instead. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne
Elston wonders why one community’s victory has to be another
community’s defeat.

They literally danced in the streets. After 10 years of fighting,
they won on a technicality. Toronto City Council had agreed to ship
more than a million tons of garbage by rail to the Adams Mine every
year and dump it. Despite the economic boom that the plan could have
provided for the economically depressed area, people fought it. And
with good reason. The abandoned open pit mine is at the headwaters of
a number of river systems. Without any clay liner, the garbage could
have contaminated groundwater for hundreds of miles.


But Toronto officials were determined to go ahead until they tried to
finalize the details of the contract. When the dump owner, Rail Cycle
North, failed to accept all liability for unforeseen cost increases,
the city pulled out of the deal.


Throughout the decade long process, environmentalists have argued
that dumping on Toronto’s neighbors wasn’t the solution. They said
that aggressive waste reduction and recycling programs were a better
answer. But immediately after the Adams Mine announcement, officials
named Michigan as the city’s next best choice for dumping its trash.
Michigan already receives 500,000 tons of Toronto’s industrial and
commercial wastes every year.


The decision has enraged environmentalists on both sides of the
Canada/U.S. border. And so now Toronto’s Mayor, Mel Lastman, wants us
to believe that he’s finally got the message. Lastman has promised
that if he’s re-elected, he’ll personally head up a waste reduction
task force.


I smell a rat, a really big garbage rat. The greatest selling point
of the Adams Mine proposal was that Toronto wasn’t required to
guarantee the volume of garbage they were dumping. What this meant
was that the city could increase its recycling efforts, and not have
to pay any penalties to Rail Cycle North. With the Michigan contract,
Toronto will have to agree to ship a minimum amount of garbage, or
face increased costs. This will probably stop any significant
reduction programs before they even get off the ground.


What I still don’t understand is why one environmental victory has to
become a defeat for someplace else. Toronto should be shamed into
taking care of its own problems instead of dumping them on another
community or another country.


If city officials thought the Michigan decision would at least get
the Adams Mine folks off their backs, they were wrong. Northern
activists have gone on record stating that this latest plan is a bad
one and they’ve begun working with Michigan environmentalists to stop
it. Given how physically, emotionally and financially exhausted they
were after their own battle, this support is quite remarkable. I keep
hoping that the folks at Toronto’s City Hall might learn from their
example that we all have to work together to solve our garbage
problems.