Process 'just rolling along,' says councillor

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By John Curry

EMC News - Waste Management held another series of open houses last week in its Environmental Assessment process to establish a new landfill at its Carp Road site.

"They are just rolling along with their process," city of Ottawa Stittsville ward councillor Shad Qadri commented to the executive of the Stittsville Village Association at its meeting on Thursday, Feb. 9, the same evening as an open house was being held in Stittsville.

Councillor Qadri said that Waste Management will probably have its Terms of Reference for the new landfill ready for community comment this spring, after which the firm will go to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for a decision.

Councillor Qadri is encouraging everyone, whether opposed to the new landfill site or not, to submit their comments to Waste Management and the Ministry of the Environment in the current ongoing process.

At the open house, which identified the preferred landfill site option as the so-called "North Footprint," it was explained that the southern half of this proposed new landfill will be on lands currently owned by Waste Management while the northern half will be on lands for which Waste Management currently has options to purchase.

The new landfill site will rise to about 31 metres above the surrounding grades.

The new landfill will have a liner system that will be built in eight stages. The first two stages will be built immediately, along with a new site entrance off Carp Road, a new scale facility and new storm water management ponds. The other stages of the liner system construction will be undertaken as required by the amount of waste delivered to the site. Off-site groundwater levels and flow orientation are not expected to be affected by this new landfill site, according to the data presented at the open house.

Waste Management has also looked at five alternatives for treatment of the leachate produced by the new landfill site. This includes on-site tree irrigation, on-site leachate evaporation, off-site fully-treated effluent discharge to a surface watercourse such as the southern branch of Huntley Creek which drains to the Carp River, off-site effluent discharge to the city of Ottawa sanitary sewer system, and truck haulage off-site to a waste water treatment plant.