AND ANOTHER ARTICLE/OPINION PIECE AGAINST THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT OF THE BOLENDER PARK LANDFILL

 This Opinion piece is by Susan Koswan in today's Waterloo Region Record. The title of the photograph and article is "Speak up for Bolender Park forest". Indeed the former landfill as is is a buffer for noise and sightlines. Elmira Pet products is on the far side (north) of the landfill as well as further north of the actual Bolender Park. Too bad the trees on the site could not also buffer out odours from the pet food plant. Instead local residents will be allowed to mix diesel fumes in with their already noxious pet food odours. Along with leachate from the landfill and various spills from the pet food plant they can also enjoy a greater variety of contaminants in the creek from the diesel tractors including oil, grease, transmission fluid, power steering fluid and of course diesel fuel. The good news for our pro development, shaft the environment brothers and sisters is that the soils will very slowly absorb and later discharge via groundwater these additional contaminants to the Canagagigue Creek.  With any luck the slowly declining concentrations of manmade chemicals already in the creek will somewhat mask the more recently released chemicals into a relatively large body of surface water.                                                      .................................................................................                                                                                          Ms Koswan speaks about "...inherent problems associated with monitoring and maintenance of control systems on a continuous basis." That is very true especially as the pathetic failure of methane control and venting over many decades has been partially blamed on traffic hitting various gas probes as well as the collection system closer to the garage and former car wrecking yard. Do you think that tractor trailers will do a better job of avoiding gas probes poking out of the surface ?                                                                  ......................................................................................                                                                                    There is also the issue of the contents of the former landfill. Much effort has long gone into minimizing the industrial contents of all the landfills in the town of Elmira. Unfortunately Uniroyal Chemical, Varnicolor Chemical, furniture factories, foundries, textile mills and much more all contributed their industrial wastes to these various landfills including toxic wastes. Ms. Koswan diplomatically suggests that there is "...so little known about the contents of the landfill below...". She is referring to the Bolender Landfill and in fact the general  public may know little about the contents but older employees of the companies and industries listed above know lots. As do those of us who have gone looking and researching the sordid history of toxic industrial waste disposal in and around Elmira, Ontario