The Toronto Star, the country’s largest circulation newspaper, reports today that, “(Site 41) dump critics launched a sophisticated public relations campaign, including a radio ad blitz and blanket emails in the days leading to tomorrow’s county council meeting, where a decision is expected on the moratorium. In the past few weeks, five of the county’s 16 municipalities, including Barrie, have thrown their support behind a moratorium. This means enough county politicians might support the one-year fact-finding plan. The dump site decision passed by a single vote in 2007.”
“In the past few months, widespread support for a one-year moratorium has zoomed, with a growing list of celebrity opponents joining the cause. Everyone from U.S environmental activist Ralph Nader – who visited Site 41 two weeks ago and wrote Premier Dalton McGuinty to voice his opposition – to Canada’s UN water czar Maude Barlow and former Toronto mayor David Crombie, to local residents, politicians, trade unionists and First Nations people has called on the county to take a second look before opening the dump site.”
“Alliston Aquifer, directly under Site 41, is part of a network of underground reservoirs running from Georgian Bay, under Lake Simcoe almost to Lake Ontario through the Oak Ridges Moraine, which itself provides drinking water for 250,000 York Region residents. Site 41 opponents maintain the dump’s natural clay liner and an additional man-made liner will leak a poisonous stew of leachate into the ground and surrounding aquifers, as most garbage sites do.”
“‘Site 41 should be scrapped because it is sitting atop a large and pristine aquifer that must at all costs be protected,’ says Barlow, Canada’s first senior adviser on water to the United Nations president.”
The full Toronto Star article is at http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/685511.
To take action before tomorrow’s vote on Site 41, please go to our website at http://canadians.org/site41.
This afternoon a Council of Canadians team of chairperson Maude Barlow, water campaigner Meera Karunananthan, media officer Dylan Penner, organizer Mark Calzavara, and Board member Steven Shrybman will be departing for Midhurst for tomorrow’s vote.
