THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Saturday's (Jan. 21/12) Kitchener-Waterloo Record has the following story "Raising a stink over the smell of gargage". This story by Jeff Outhit, on the fourtieth anniversary of the Erb St. landfill, describes exactly what the title indicates. It is all about the odours and the effects on neighbours. It also advises indirectly that the planning process in Waterloo Region is broken. When this landfill was opened in 1972 there were very few neighbours. Now with urban sprawl there are homes, businesses and even a golf course nearby. Clearly both the lessons of the Ottawa St. landfill in Kitchener have been forgotten as well as plain common sense. Landfills smell, they leak methane and they pollute groundwater. None of this is rocket science much less even news. It is the groundwater situation that is the elephant in the room. In Kitchener the Greenbrook wellfield was recently shut down for a year while special treatment was installed for one particular industrial chemical namely 1,4 dioxane. This chemical and other solvents including benzene all migrated from the Ottawa St. landfill to the pumping wells on Greenbrook near Stirling Ave.. Although a significant distance it is by no means a prize winner for plumes of chemicals to travel. Also at the Ottawa St. Landfill (McLennan ski hill), methane found it's way into townhouses built near the base of the landfill. They were abandoned for years while technologys were looked at to remove or divert the methane. Canada Mortgage and Housing were stuck with the mortgage costs for years, which I would expect meant that Joe taxpayer picked up the financial fallout from both private development and political stupidity. Apparently we've learned nothing from both similar follys in the U.S. as well as our own folly here in Waterloo Region.

Although the Erb St. landfill now has a leachate collection system, it operated for at least two decades without. Groundwater contamination has been found off-site which again should be no surprise to anyone. I have by no means absolute faith in their current retrofitted leachate system. Why should I? Engineering controls are certainly helpful but perfection is probably an impossible goal, especially after the fact. The nearest wells would be the Erb St. wellfield (W6A, W6B, W7, W8) followed by the municipal wells in St. Agatha. The City of Waterloo boundary with Wilmot Township is nearby but they are both in Waterloo Region. It is my expectation that Waterloo Region know full well that they've long ago comprimised the majority of their groundwater by industrial pollution and all their talk of protection (and action) after the fact are simply to delay the inevitable: a pipeline to Lake Erie. The current date for construction is 2035. If through protection twenty to fifty years after it was needed they can hold off a massive water pipeline then they will be happy.