Longtime incinerator critic pleased facility may be closed
By Tanya Collier MacDonald
Cape Breton Post
Sat., Aug. 7, 2004
An unrelenting critic of the
Cape Breton Regional Municipality's
incinerator is pleased to
hear the facility may be on the
chopping block.
"This community has been
exposed to toxic emissions from
the burning of biomedical
waste and garbage for too many
years," said Marlene Kane, an
environmental activist who has
dedicated her personal time to
seeing the incinerator's doors
close. "The sooner it shuts
down, the better."
Kane said incinerating solid
waste and the province's
biomedical waste is an expensive
and unsafe way of dealing with
garbage.
"Moving to a different way of
waste disposal is long overdue."
She noted exceedances of
dioxins and furans in 2001 and
2002, as reported by the
Department of Environment and
Labour in the form of a letter to
the municipality are alarming.
"Those stack tests are done
under ideal conditions," she
said. "There would be
exceedances on a daily basis
when conditions were less than
ideal."
Dioxins and furans are of
particular importance to
enviromnental regulators because of
- as government describes it -
their extraordinary environmental
persistence and capacity
to accumulate in biological
tissues.
As a result, dioxins and
furans are slated for virtual
elimination under the Canadian
Environmental Protection Act,
the federal Toxic Substances
Management Policy, and the
Canadian Council of Ministers
of the Environment's Policy for
the Management of Toxic Substances.
In a report presented to council
during a recent in-camera
session, Kevin MacDonald, the
director of engineering and
public works, recommended the
municipality should transport
its garbage to Guysborough
County.
The change will result in the
incinerator's closure and likely
job losses.
Kane said it's discouraging
that jobs at the incinerator may
be gone as a result of its closure,
especially since the loss was preventable.
The municipality had plenty
of time to develop a second-generation
landfill - required by
provincial law as of 2006 - closer
to home, she said.
"I question how much time
the CBRM put into finding a
place for one."
She agrees that a number of
residents are no longer willing
to accept landfills in their communities
and it would be a challenge for the municipality to
locate one. As well, the option of
constructing a second-generation
landfill in this region is
nearly impossible.
"The difficulty in leaving the
decision to the last minute is
that you're narrowing your
options," she said. "And I'm not
in favour of the incinerator getting
an extension on its operation
in order to accommodate
tardiness."
|