Ministry looking at amount of waste at Taro dump

The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change is looking into a citizen’s contention the Taro industrial dump in upper Stoney Creek has taken in more waste than allowed by its licence.

Paul Widmeyer, the Hamilton office’s acting district manager, told members of the site’s community liaison committee last week the matter has been referred to the ministry’s approvals branch in Toronto for review.

He said he doesn’t have a timetable for when the probe will be completed, but results may be available when the committee holds its next meeting on Dec. 4.

“That kind of a review is typically not done locally. We have one engineer locally but it’s not within his mandate,” Widmeyer said.

“It’s best done at our approvals branch where there’s a bunch of engineers that look over our applications for landfills and assesses them.”

Area resident Wes Connor alleges owner Terrapure Environmental’s documents show the dump has a 150-metre plateau of waste that is at least 1.5 metres higher than the peak elevation allowed by its approvals.

Although the site can exceed its approved height until it closes, he argues there’s already too much waste to stay within allowable limits even with a new northern section currently under construction.

In an email to Widmeyer also provided to the committee, Connor says he believes Terrapure has exceeded Taro’s capacity “on the hope” that it will get approval to expand the dump.

The company is awaiting ministry approval of terms of reference for an environmental assessment on its proposal to boost the present waste capacity of 6.32 million cubic metres to 10 million.

Terrapure communications director Greg Jones told the committee the company is aware of Connor’s concerns and that the ministry is reviewing, as it always does, the site’s latest 2016 annual report.

“When and if the ministry has any questions for us, we’ll be happy to address them,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll assume that they’re happy with everything, as they have been previously, and there’ll be nothing to address.”

Committee chair Brad Hart said it’s appropriate to let the ministry and Terrapure respond to Connor’s allegations.

“It’s a pretty serious concern,” he said. “I think we need to rely on the expertise of the ministry and the expertise and response from the Terrapure landfill because we’re all just regular citizens in the community, we’re not mathematicians, we’re not used to calculating weight loads and that type of thing.”

Widmeyer said he doesn’t know when the ministry will make a decision on the terms of reference for the expansion bid’s environmental assessment.