Why is that you ask? Well let's see a few recent examples. Shanley St. in Kitchener was home to an abandoned factory for many decades which at one time was an Electrohome/Deilcraft furniture making facility. It is now being rebuilt as an apartment complex. Secondly here in Elmira the old apple orchard at the corner of Union and First St. owned by Ken Seiling's mother-in-law has been torn down and levelled for a townhouse complex likely to be built this spring and summer. Thirdly an unsubstantiated rumour has suggested that Woolwich Township have issued a building permit for construction within 30 metres of a former landfill site.
What do all three of these have in common? Well certainly two of them are either on or beside formerly contaminated soils and groundwater. The third on Union St. is across First St. from the former Varnicolor site which is still undergoing remediation and which certainly leaked off-site to the west (i.e. Motiveair). It is also across Union St. from the former and infamous Uniroyal Chemical . Elmira has a plethora of former landfills here in town most likely with none of them having been remediated or even equipped with leachate or methane collection systems. Just another environmental crisis waiting to happen.
Hence Woolwich, similar to Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge are generally happy to build on or beside contaminated sites as long as they have paperwork from the Ministry of Errors & Excuses (MECP) suggesting that the properties, with or without conditions, are acceptable to build on.
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