Something still smells in northeastern Ontario

Page 13

Toronto city council may have quashed a deal to dump 20 years' worth of its garbage in a pristine northern lake, but not everyone is persuaded the controversial plan won't be resurrected.

In October, contract negotiations broke down between the city and

Rail Cycle North, a consortium of five companies headed by Gordon McGuinty's Notre Development of North Bay. The proponents wanted to ship a million tons a year of Toronto's trash by rail to the former Adams Mine site south of Kirkland Lake, Ont., for 20 years. If leachate escaped it could contaminate the rivers of central and south Timiskaming for 1,000 years, but waste monitoring was only going to be done for 100.

Now Timiskaming First Nation and others opposed to McGuinty, including some Toronto city council members, are questioning whether the deal is on again. McGuinty attended a meeting of Toronto's works committee Jan. 10 and on CBC radio Jan. 17 said Kirkland Lake supports his proposal, as proved by the town's municipal election.

Councillor Anne Johnston (Ward 22 North Toronto) wasn't present when McGuinty made his most recent appearance, but "the works committee members were suitably disturbed and the mayor (Mel Lastman) reiterated 'it's dead,' . . . in his inimitable way," said Johnston.

"But you know, I've always thought that it'll come back in some form or another, and we've had a garbage spill on the (highway) 401-not one of our trucks but attributed to our trucks-and the mayors of the cities along the 401 are all getting upset. So you know, McGuinty is stirring up the you-know-what, I think, to suit his game."

Terry Graves, spokesman for the Against the Adams Mine Coalition, based in New Liskeard in central Timiskaming, said they were watching the situation and were holding a public meeting Jan. 28.

"We're still here, we're still active. I've been on the phone most of the morning with my MPP and with a number of people who are involved in it . . . we haven't taken our eyes off Mr. McGuinty for a second.

"McGuinty was on CBC radio this morning in Northern Ontario saying that the Kirkland Lake municipal election really proved that there's great support for the Adams mine, but throughout that campaign (new mayor) Bill Enouye and the other councillors who were pro-garbage were going around saying 'the Adams mine is dead; let's get on with economic development.' And then the minute they win an election, they're saying this was a referendum on the Adams mine."

Timiskaming First Nation on the Quebec-Ontario border is the only First Nation downriver from the mine, but all the Timiskaming bands as well as the Chiefs of Ontario and Nishnawbe-Aski Nation opposed Rail Cycle North and Toronto's plan.

Timiskaming First Nation's general director Mark Hall told Windspeaker Jan. 24 "[Chief Carol McBride] and I attended the coalition meeting last Sunday and we're very much keeping track of it through regular communication with the Ontario side, both Native and non-Native, and we are on a regular, in fact, a daily basis receiving updates from our coalition members and from the members that in fact supported this in the metro (Toronto) area. . . . I think Carol, our chief, is concerned, as am I, that this thing is a), not dead, and b), may come back." He added the worry was not so much Toronto's mayor, but Ontario premier Mike Harris: "that Mike Harris might well commandeer this entire thing and it could end up on our doorstep again."

When Johnston learned northerners were on alert regarding any moves to reactive plans for the dump, she said they should be.

"The fact Kirkland Lake municipality likes the idea is irrelevant . . . my opinion was based on the geological data, the fact of the fractured rock and all the rest of it. It doesn't matter where it is."

Johnston attributes the overwhelming support she says she has received on this issue to the public's heightened awareness of water issues as a result of the Walkerton, Ont. water scandal.

"I would say that the pubic, probably on a scale of seven to three, is appalled at sort of putting garbage into a mine which might leak.

"It was obviously a way of getting the railway fixed up for the North, and I've got a lot of sympathy for those sorts of problems in the North, but I don't see that the people of Toronto should have to come up with a solution to fix those problems." (Ontario Northland may shut down its unprofitable northeastern Ontario rail line.)

The garbage controversy last fall united to an unprecedented degree First Nations, agricultural workers, environmentalists, politicians and many citizens from Toronto to the Arctic watershed to defeat the plan to ship the garbage to what has become a freshwater lake in Algonquin territory.

On Oct. 29, Chief McBride, accompanied by 600 supporters from northeastern Ontario and Quebec, renamed the lake Mamowedewin, "which means 'coming together,' for that is what has happened in this struggle," she said.

A poll commissioned by Timiskaming-Cochrane MPP David Ramsay showed 77 per cent of the population in his jurisdiction also opposed the project. But when Toronto city council backed off at the last minute the reason they gave was lack of agreement on the issue of who would be responsible for unforeseen costs.

Toronto then signed a five-year contract with Republic Services Inc. of Michigan to ship commercial and industrial waste there. But residential and municipal waste is not part of that deal; the city is still using the Keele Valley landfill, scheduled to close in 2002.

The word now is that Toronto, which said it would expand its recycling programs, has cut a promising pilot composting project. A couple of other garbage pilot projects that had been approved by the previous municipal council were not even started by the works department.

McGuinty has denied he was in Toronto to get the Adams Mine deal back on track, but he said it could happen if the city was interested.