Post by Michele on Aug 18, 2009 21:06:41 GMT -5
Toronto Sun
MARK BONOKOSKI ~ COLUMNIST
Aug 18/2009
WYEVALE -- On a cold, dreary day in May six years ago when Gord Leonard was last visited, a team of horses could be seen pulling a plow through the black soil adjacent to Leonard's own farm, the rising mist giving a soft focus to the distant image of an era thought to be long gone.
Yet it hangs on still.
Old Jim Lambie, now in his eighties, still seeds his crops each spring with a horse-drawn surrey plow, and Gord Leonard, now 62, still farms a huge swath of land next door with more modern John Deere machinery.
But for how much longer?
"If the dump at Site 41 is not stopped, and the ground water becomes contaminated, how much will my property be worth, or my neighbours' properties?" Leonard asks. "As farm land, it will be worth nothing.
"It is not so much me that I think about," he adds. "It's my grandchildren, and my neighbours' grandchildren.
"They're the ones I care about."
Site 41, the controversial 20-hectare parcel of once fertile farm land now being gutted by Simcoe County for a landfill, abuts Gord Leonard's land.
It is land that his father cleared, and where his father built the farmhouse where Gord Leonard himself was born, and where he eventually raised his own son, Darrell, to follow in his footsteps.
Once the engine to his tractor is shut down, and the blades cutting clover hay become silent, the sounds of earth-moving equipment can be heard beyond the last hedgerow, their huge jaws digging the first of five proposed five-acre cells into which garbage will be dumped over the next half century -- garbage that will be tossed atop a vast aquifer of incredibly pure water that stretches from Georgian Bay to well beyond the Oak Ridges Moraine.
"Contaminate that water, and all the farms around it will die -- mine included," he says.
'DISASTER'
"It's a disaster waiting to happen."
Because his farm is within the critical 3-km perimetre of the dump, Gord Leonard managed to get himself on the Community Monitoring Committee (CMC) mandated by the Environmental Assessment Board, a move which has the county crying foul -- despite his legal right to be on that committee.
"The county is now complaining that its critics are using the CMC to push our fight against Site 41," he says.
"And we are pushing our fight -- but only to get answers ... truthful answers."
It is a complicated issue.
When Simcoe County got its certificate of approval to move forward with the dump back in the late 1990s, it got that approval from the ministry of environment based on county submissions that the aquifer under Site 41 contained water with an upward gradient, rather than a downward gradient.
A downward gradient would have immediately nixed Site 41 as an appropriate landfill venue, since downward gradients actually suck escaping landfill toxins into aquifers, while upward gradients actually keep contaminants pushed back.
Gord Leonard, however, does not believe Site 41 has an upward gradient, and this comes from experience, as well as documents he has seen while sitting as a member of the community monitoring committee.
"There are five bore holes on Site 41," he says. "Bore hole No. 5 is smack-dab in the middle but, after years showing its water level dropping, the county now has documentation showing that its water level is now actually rising -- making it upward gradient, and therefore making it just what it wants it to be.
"But tell me, how does that happen? How does water suddenly change directions?
"I'll tell you how it happens," he says. "It happens when information gets fudged."
Back in July, after the county refused to share its documentation, Gord Leonard asked the ministry of environment to get it for him.
Thus far, there has been no reply.
$10 MILLION PLUS
It would appear, however, that Ontario's environment commissioner, Gordon Miller, seems to agree with Leonard's suspicions -- recently stating that building a dump over an aquifer in 2009, particularly using an engineering process proposed in the early 1990s, was a political mystifier.
"If we were going to start this process today, we would not build on this site," Miller has been quoted as saying. "(But), is it going to fail? Not likely. There (has been) so much money and engineering spent on it."
The money spent, including the county's purchase of the land, has been estimated at $10 million plus, and counting.
"I have been here all my life," says Leonard, as he sets out on his tractor.
"And I know, from my own experience that there is no upward gradient component to that aquifer. I've dug my share of wells. I know."
As Leonard talks, water being pumped out of the dump site flows atop freshly laid stone rip rap a half-kilometre away from his property line in the No Trespass zone of Site 41, and makes its way into a small creek that will eventually wend its way into the Wye River.
It is being pumped out of Site 41 to prepare a massive garbage pit with a protective liner -- the so-called safety barrier between what will be millions of tonnes of garbage and millions upon millions of litres of aquifer water.
That shield, says the county, will save the aquifer's environment should anything go wrong.
Six years ago, when Gord Leonard was last visited, the aftermath of the Walkerton tragedy -- with at least seven people dead from drinking E. coli contaminated water, plus hundreds made ill -- was still in the headlines.
From a briefcase jammed with files and documents, Leonard pulled out a copy of a story written in Farm & Country magazine about a Milton-area dairy farmer who suddenly had a dump go up in his backyard.
And in an accompanying picture, that farmer is holding up a jar of the well water he was supposed to use to sustain his cattle.
It was the colour of chocolate milk.
www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/mark_bonokoski/2009/08/18/10493171-sun.html
MARK BONOKOSKI ~ COLUMNIST
Aug 18/2009
WYEVALE -- On a cold, dreary day in May six years ago when Gord Leonard was last visited, a team of horses could be seen pulling a plow through the black soil adjacent to Leonard's own farm, the rising mist giving a soft focus to the distant image of an era thought to be long gone.
Yet it hangs on still.
Old Jim Lambie, now in his eighties, still seeds his crops each spring with a horse-drawn surrey plow, and Gord Leonard, now 62, still farms a huge swath of land next door with more modern John Deere machinery.
But for how much longer?
"If the dump at Site 41 is not stopped, and the ground water becomes contaminated, how much will my property be worth, or my neighbours' properties?" Leonard asks. "As farm land, it will be worth nothing.
"It is not so much me that I think about," he adds. "It's my grandchildren, and my neighbours' grandchildren.
"They're the ones I care about."
Site 41, the controversial 20-hectare parcel of once fertile farm land now being gutted by Simcoe County for a landfill, abuts Gord Leonard's land.
It is land that his father cleared, and where his father built the farmhouse where Gord Leonard himself was born, and where he eventually raised his own son, Darrell, to follow in his footsteps.
Once the engine to his tractor is shut down, and the blades cutting clover hay become silent, the sounds of earth-moving equipment can be heard beyond the last hedgerow, their huge jaws digging the first of five proposed five-acre cells into which garbage will be dumped over the next half century -- garbage that will be tossed atop a vast aquifer of incredibly pure water that stretches from Georgian Bay to well beyond the Oak Ridges Moraine.
"Contaminate that water, and all the farms around it will die -- mine included," he says.
'DISASTER'
"It's a disaster waiting to happen."
Because his farm is within the critical 3-km perimetre of the dump, Gord Leonard managed to get himself on the Community Monitoring Committee (CMC) mandated by the Environmental Assessment Board, a move which has the county crying foul -- despite his legal right to be on that committee.
"The county is now complaining that its critics are using the CMC to push our fight against Site 41," he says.
"And we are pushing our fight -- but only to get answers ... truthful answers."
It is a complicated issue.
When Simcoe County got its certificate of approval to move forward with the dump back in the late 1990s, it got that approval from the ministry of environment based on county submissions that the aquifer under Site 41 contained water with an upward gradient, rather than a downward gradient.
A downward gradient would have immediately nixed Site 41 as an appropriate landfill venue, since downward gradients actually suck escaping landfill toxins into aquifers, while upward gradients actually keep contaminants pushed back.
Gord Leonard, however, does not believe Site 41 has an upward gradient, and this comes from experience, as well as documents he has seen while sitting as a member of the community monitoring committee.
"There are five bore holes on Site 41," he says. "Bore hole No. 5 is smack-dab in the middle but, after years showing its water level dropping, the county now has documentation showing that its water level is now actually rising -- making it upward gradient, and therefore making it just what it wants it to be.
"But tell me, how does that happen? How does water suddenly change directions?
"I'll tell you how it happens," he says. "It happens when information gets fudged."
Back in July, after the county refused to share its documentation, Gord Leonard asked the ministry of environment to get it for him.
Thus far, there has been no reply.
$10 MILLION PLUS
It would appear, however, that Ontario's environment commissioner, Gordon Miller, seems to agree with Leonard's suspicions -- recently stating that building a dump over an aquifer in 2009, particularly using an engineering process proposed in the early 1990s, was a political mystifier.
"If we were going to start this process today, we would not build on this site," Miller has been quoted as saying. "(But), is it going to fail? Not likely. There (has been) so much money and engineering spent on it."
The money spent, including the county's purchase of the land, has been estimated at $10 million plus, and counting.
"I have been here all my life," says Leonard, as he sets out on his tractor.
"And I know, from my own experience that there is no upward gradient component to that aquifer. I've dug my share of wells. I know."
As Leonard talks, water being pumped out of the dump site flows atop freshly laid stone rip rap a half-kilometre away from his property line in the No Trespass zone of Site 41, and makes its way into a small creek that will eventually wend its way into the Wye River.
It is being pumped out of Site 41 to prepare a massive garbage pit with a protective liner -- the so-called safety barrier between what will be millions of tonnes of garbage and millions upon millions of litres of aquifer water.
That shield, says the county, will save the aquifer's environment should anything go wrong.
Six years ago, when Gord Leonard was last visited, the aftermath of the Walkerton tragedy -- with at least seven people dead from drinking E. coli contaminated water, plus hundreds made ill -- was still in the headlines.
From a briefcase jammed with files and documents, Leonard pulled out a copy of a story written in Farm & Country magazine about a Milton-area dairy farmer who suddenly had a dump go up in his backyard.
And in an accompanying picture, that farmer is holding up a jar of the well water he was supposed to use to sustain his cattle.
It was the colour of chocolate milk.
www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/mark_bonokoski/2009/08/18/10493171-sun.html