Canadian Trash Exports to Halt?

Residents of Michigan may have reason to hope that more of Toronto’s garbage won’t be coming their way. The city of Toronto is in financial trouble and a municipal committee has voted to save money by keeping the city’s garbage in Canada. However, as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, there are still some hurdles to overcome:

Transcript

Residents of Michigan may have reason to hope that more of Toronto’s garbage won’t be coming their way. The city of Toronto is in financial trouble and a municipal committee has voted to save money by keeping the city’s garbage in Canada.

However as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, there are still some hurdles to overcome:

The idea of daily truck convoys of Toronto’s garbage speeding to landfill sites in Michigan hasn’t sat well with many residents and environmentalists in the state. Toronto already trucks about 750-thousand tons of its trash to Michigan each year…. that’s about 85 truckloads a day. A new agreement calls for an additional 450-thousand tons of waste annually. But in an effort to save money, Toronto’s policy and finance committee is in favor of keeping the existing landfill, north of city, open for another six years. That would be good news for opponents of the Michigan deal and it would save Toronto about 26 million dollars U.S. a year. The possibility has again led to a heated debate on the issue. The Ontario government has long maintained that the existing landfill site would close at the end of this year. Many residents have also expressed their opposition. Toronto City Council will have the final say. But it can only make a recommendation to the province.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.