This past week the Ontario government introduced legislation that will be incredibly damaging to Ontario’s environment. Bill 212 will fast track construction of highway 413 by removing the requirement for it to go through an environmental assessment. The bill will also will allow the province to override municipal planning departments and limit the installation or force the removal of bike lanes in Ontario’s cities and towns. While this bill may be brilliant politics, it is terrible public policy. Here’s why.
This past Wednesday evening about 50 Brampton residents met in the community room at Century Gardens Recreation Centre to learn more about Emerald Energy from Waste’s proposal to become the largest waste burning facility in Canada. The event was jointly organized by Environmental Defence, Sierra Club Peel, and Brampton Environmental Alliance. Miranda Baksh introduced the speakers and moderated a Q & A panel session, that was followed by open questions from the audience.
First to speak was Karen Wirsig, a Researcher specializing in plastics and Senior Program Manager with Environmental Defence. Karen noted that the Emerald plant is located just inside Brampton’s southeast border at 7656 Bramalea Road. It currently burns 182,000 tonnes of waste each year. The company has a proposal pending Ontario government approval that would allow it to more than quadruple capacity to 900,000 tonnes per year or about 1/3 of all of the waste generated in Ontario. That means the plant would need to truck in garbage from all over the Province in order to support its business model.
Karen shared several concerns about the current plant and its proposed expansion. First, while the company promotes energy from waste as a climate friendly way of producing energy, it is anything but. It turns out that burning waste produces 50% more carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour generated than coal and almost 3X the emissions compared with burning natural gas to create electricity.
Second, the household waste stream contains about 13% plastics, 5% building material including preserved wood, 3% Textiles, including a high proportion of man-made materials, and 9% of other household waste including e-waste. When burned, these products produce a range of chemicals that are known to cause health problems including cancer, endocrine system disruption, and respiratory issues such as asthma. The company’s own data forecasts, that, with the expansion, the levels of these chemicals in the plant’s discharge would significantly exceed both Provincial and Federal guidelines by 107 to 375%!
Third, the emissions from the plant’s stacks are self-monitored by the company. They are subject to inspection by the Province but that happens only once per year, and then only after the plant has been notified of the coming inspection.
Finally, more than 50% of the waste stream is food and other organic waste. As anyone knows who has ever tried to burn left-overs on a campfire, food waste doesn’t burn well because of its high moisture content. It sizzles, smolders and works to put out the flames. The same is true in a waste burn facility. Often natural gas must be added to the waste stream in order to drive off the moisture and keep the material burning. In other words, burning waste is neither good for human health nor environmentally friendly.
Next to speak was Emily Alfred, a Senior Waste Campaigner at the Toronto Environmental Alliance, (TEA). Emily said that only about 30-40% of Ontario’s waste is residential, the rest comes from industry and institutional sources that have a much poorer track record of separating, recycling and reusing waste. Emily’s message is that there are better ways to deal with garbage than burning it. It just takes political will and leadership to define appropriate policy.
Finally, if you live in a condominium or multi-unit apartment building, contact Emily at Toronto Environment Alliance for tips on how you can start a recycling program in your building.
Miranda Baksh introduces panel members Amisha Moorjani, Steve Kirby, and Divya Arora.
The session wrapped up with Miranda moderating a panel discussion including Amisha Moorjani – business owner and BEA Board member, Steve Kirby – business owner and member of Sierra Club Peel’s Executive Committee, Divya Arora – Community Climate Council founding member and Youth Outreach Coordinator for David Suzuki Foundation as well as Karen and Emily. Steve and Amisha recently delegated to Peel Region and Brampton City Councils about the Emerald proposal. Both Steve and Amisha have taken steps to reduce the amount of waste from their business even though these efforts result in higher operational costs. For them it is a question of doing the right thing.
If you think, as we do, that the Emerald proposal is a mistake, take a few minutes to write a personal letter to your local MPP. But please do it soon as the Environment Minister will likely be rendering their verdict within the next few weeks.
MPP Contact information
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment opposes waste burning
A reminder that the Brampton Environmental Alliance, along with Environmental Defence and Sierra Club Peel will co-host a community information session tomorrow night starting at 7:30pm at Century Gardens Recreation Centre. See the BEA Events page for more information and to register to attend this important event.
In the summer of 2023, BEA member Bill Godfrey pitched an idea to Brampton City Council that the City should develop a strategy to become the first litter-free city in Canada. Bill is the founder of a local community group, People Against Littering. Since 2019 he and his enthusiastic volunteers have organized and participated in hundreds of clean-up events across the City and have documented picking up over 3,000,000 pieces of litter! Despite these efforts litter remains a persistent problem that is both an eye-sore and a health hazard to visitors and residents alike.
Last week at a news conference , Premier Doug Ford confirmed that his government is considering a province-wide ban on bike lanes where their installation would require removal of a vehicle lane. This proposal may be good populist politics. The topic of bike lanes is contentious. It often elicits visceral negative reactions, from business owners who see them as a threat to commerce, from neighbourhood groups who see them as a threat to what they believe is their God-given right to on street parking and, from drivers in general, who see bike lanes as a loss of their allocated road space and an addition of complexity to their already mentally and emotionally challenging commute. Yet the installation of bike lanes, as part of a broader vision for allowing more choice in how we travel, is a potential antidote for many of today’s environmental, social and economic challenges.
This is the eighth in a series of posts on our journey to navigate government grants and loans available for home energy retrofits and to replace our natural gas furnace with a cold-climate heat pump. Click here to see all articles in the series .
I want to share our first experience with our heat pump now working as an air conditioner. In a word, FANTASTIC!
Once the weather gets consistently milder my habit has been to turn off the furnace and open the windows to bring in some fresh air. This year we were able to do that in early May. I have typically only turned the A/C on when we experience hot weather over multiple days.
The Emerald Energy from Waste facility has been operating in Peel since 1992, initially built and operated by Algonquin Power. The Region cancelled a waste burning contract with Algonquin in 2012 but the facility was sold to Emerald shortly thereafter and has been continuing operations by consuming waste from industrial, commercial and institutional sources.
In 2016, the Region considered building its own waste burning facility but cancelled those plans due to concerns about the pollution a second facility would emit. Instead it embarked on a plan to divert 75% of its waste by 2034, through a combination of improved policies, procedures and, technologies related to waste reduction, reuse, recycling and, composting.
Rooted in Hope Training at Gore Meadows Community Centre
The Rooted in Hope 2023-24 project hosted its final event on Sunday April 21st. About a dozen and a half participants, one third seniors and two thirds secondary school students, enjoyed the bright sunshine yet below seasonal temperatures for the final tree monitoring training at Gore Meadows Community Centre.
Incinerator/Waste-to-Energy corporations are once againtrying to sell their polluting plants to municipal councils
[Editor’s note: Emerald Energy From Waste, a Brampton based company recently submitted a proposal to the Ontario Government requesting permission to increase its incineration capacity up to 5 times from current levels. Peel Region Council cancelled its contract with Emerald in 2012 meaning the waste burned in the Emerald plant is imported from other municipalities. If allowed to proceed this expanded plant would be the largest mass burn facility in Canada with a capacity to consume 1/3 of all of Ontario’s garbage.]
After years of bad press about failed incineration/waste-to-energy projects, plants polluting their communities, municipal bankruptcies due to “put or pay” contracts, fires at various sites, stiff opposition to new plants from citizens and an end to some lucrative government subsidies, incinerator proponents largely disappeared from the Canadian landscape. Now, however, they are back.
This past Thursday the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario submitted a joint application to the Federal Court to withdraw the federal environmental assessment for Highway 413. The withdrawal means that arguments about the legalities surrounding the Federal Impact Assessment Act will not be clarified by the courts. It also means there will be no opportunity for the court, (and thereby the public) to adjudicate the environmental impacts of building this highway.
“The federal government needs to urgently introduce legislation that updates the Impact Assessment Act and that re-designates the Highway 413 project under it. Revoking the designation before a new Impact Assessment Act is in place was irresponsible and unnecessary,” said Laura Bowman, Staff Lawyer, Ecojustice.
