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‘This dump will not open’, vows Maude Barlow

On page A14 and A15 of today’s Toronto Star, reporter Moira Welsh writes, “More than two decades since it was first proposed, (Simcoe) county’s newest garbage dump – approved by the Ontario Environment Ministry – is now under construction, with plans to open in the fall.”

“Maude Barlow, named the United Nations’ senior adviser on water issues and chair of the Council of Canadians has thrown her energy into it, vowing to lead protests at the site throughout the summer.”

“Stephen Ogden, volunteer citizen leader of the long fight against Simcoe County’s plan to build a waste disposal facility over lush farmland that bubbles with pure water flowing into Georgian Bay …says the protesters have given up on the Ministry of Environment, which has backed the project for years despite questions about potential for leachate in the water, whether there is a need for a new dump in a province that is leading a charge toward zero waste and why the county’s two dormant dumpsites are not being used instead.”

“Leaders like Vicki Monague say they will keep their sacred fire burning (at a vigil on the site manned by aboriginal residents of nearby Christian Island) until Premier Dalton McGuinty stops construction on the site. Monague said the site is on native treaty land, but there has been no consultation from the federal government.”

“Ontario’s environment commissioner, Gordon Miller, says the battle over Dump Site 41 is a political mystery – a site being built on an aquifer in 2009, using an engineering concept proposed in the early 1990s.”

The full article, ‘Long fight over Midland-area dump promises tense, hot summer’, can be read at http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/642925.

The Saturday Star has 634,886 readers.

For more on this Council of Canadians campaign, please go to http://canadians.org/water/issues/Site41/index.html.