The Lafarge Canada Cement Plant in Bath, Ontario has made an application to the provincial Ministry of the Environment for permits to alter the discharge from their smokestacks and to operate a waste disposal site. Central to their plan is to store and incinerate a number of waste products as fuel alternatives (they currently burn coal).
Some of the materials Lafarge wishes to burn:
• Tires
• Human Waste
• Agricultural By-products
• Solid shredded material
• Pelletized municipal waste
• Animal meal
• Non-recyclable plastics; and
• Dioxins
Under the proposal, these materials will be trucked in from across Ontario and Quebec and as far away as 8 U.S. States (New York, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey and Massachusetts).
In their application, there is no mention of retrofitting their equipment: no new scrubbing equipment
and no secondary burner for safety, measures that are required in Europe for this sort of operation.
Lafarge has received approval from the Ministry of the Environment for their proposal but serious questions still remain. It is unclear whether all of the materials to be burned under the plan have been fully disclosed to the Ministry. A full environmental review has not been undertaken and the Ministry is depending on Lafarge's own numbers and projections to make their judgment. Community groups including Clean Air Bath and Clean Air Kingston, as well as national groups such as Waterkeeper's and the Sierra Legal Defence Fund have joined in an effort to urge Lafarge to be completely transparent with their plans and to urge the Ministry of the Environment to complete an Individual Environmental Assessment as is lawfully required under the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act.
Here is a list of articles and other materials regarding this local issue and the experiences of other communities around the world that have had to grapple with waste incinerators in their communities.
Clean Air Bath:
Loyalist Environmental Coalition: Martin Hauschild, President - email - cellphone - (613) 296 4355
WaterKeepers: email -
web - www.waterkeeper.ca
Other Contacts:
Christine Elwell, Staff Lawyer, Sierra Legal (416) 368 7533 ext 29
Elaine MacDonald, Senior Scientist, Sierra Legal (416) 368 7533 ext 27
Gord Perks, Toronto Environmental Alliance (416) 596 0660
Many communities around the world have grappled with having waste incinerators on their doorsteps.
Here are some articles describing their experiences and what has been learned.
Recent Letters About The Issue.
Some sample letters recently sent to the Ministry.
Send your own letter to the MOE regarding the decision to ban tire incineration
across the province except at the Lafarge plant in Bath.
To submit official comment on proposed province
wide ban on incineration of tires, which exempts Lafarge's Bath
plant:
- Click here (MS Word
Doc. or HTML) to open the
Comment-On-Ban letter.
- Type your name and contact information to the bottom
of it
- Add your personal note and additional comments to
the top, so that the ERT reads this first (may not read in full if they see it
is a form letter)
- Resave letter under a different name - e.g.:
comment.from.s.quinton.
- Attach this amended letter to an email to the ERT
email address: lisa.mychajluk@ontario.ca (or fax
to 416-325-4437)
- Under cc - enter the following email addresses: ldombrowsky.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org, jgerretsen.mpp@liberal.ola.org,
lbroten.mpp@liberal.ola.org, dmcguinty.mpp@liberal.ola.org,
laurie_scott@ontla.ola.org, tabunsp-qp@ndp.on.ca
- Then send it off!
With thanks to Deri Fairman of Clean Air Kingston, Susan Quinton and Corinna
Dally-Starna of Clean Air Bath for compiling and forwarding articles and letters.
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