CARDINAL – The province has put the brakes on any future construction or operation of a mega dump in Edwardsburgh-Cardinal.
That’s according to township councillor Michael Barrett, who shared the details about ED-19 in a Facebook video Tuesday morning.
“This is truly great news,” Barrett said.
The councillor thanked the citizen’s group, Citizens Against the ED-19 Dump, and MPP Steve Clark for championing the cause against the landfill.
In late October, Clark asked the province to pull the permits for the proposed mega dump.
“Allowing a private operator to use 20-year-old environmental approvals to open a mega-dump is unprecedented and it would be against the wishes of the public and the elected council of Edwardsburgh-Cardinal,” Clark said during Question Period at Queen’s Park on Oct. 30.
Clark released a statement to Brockville Newswatch this afternoon:
“The decision is an acknowledgment of the serious issues raised by concerned citizens over the past year. As this matter may be subject to an appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal, I will not be making further comment.”
The fight has been going on since December 2016 when the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville it would be holding a public meeting about the 165 acre site at the west end of Byers Road.
ED-19 was approved for a dump site in 1998 and, recently, the county had received an expression of interest from R.W. Tomlinson Limited to develop the landfill site.
The proposed dump would have been 1.56 million cubic meters in size and would have taken 50,000 metric tons of waste each year for at least 25 years.
But Barrett says the fight is not over.
“We need to keep the pressure on. We need to continue to let the politicians at counties know that we don’t want this dump…we need to continue folks know that our community is not for sale…not to big garbage,” Barrett said.