Environmental Bureau of Investigation - Tories, frustrated Brad Clark at odds over landfill guck

Labour Minister Brad Clark is using Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights to challenge his own government.

The Stoney Creek MPP filed an application under Section 61 of the bill asking Environment and Energy Minister Chris Stockwell to review laws and regulations allowing landfill leachate to be discharged into city sewers.

Clark said yesterday he took the unusual step because successive environment ministers have relied on the advice of ministry employees who consider the practice acceptable.

"I have raised this matter for seven years, three since my election, and the advice from ministry bureaucrats is to do nothing. I'm caught in the Catch 22 (a contradictory situation with no escape)."

"Stockwell knows about my application, the previous minister ( Elizabeth Witmer) knew about my concern and that I was planning the application. This is a surprise to none of them."

The application was submitted through the office of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, an independent official who oversees application of the bill of rights and reports to the legislature.

Peter Lapp, executive assistant to commissioner Gord Miller, said he thought it was the first application from a minister, but noted the process is open to "any citizen who feels strongly enough."

Clark co-signed the application with Carmen D'Angelo, a volunteer citizen member of the Taro East Landfill community liaison committee.

Before Clark's election in 1999, the two men were leaders of a citizens' group opposed to the landfill opening.

The Ministry of Environment and Energy earlier this month approved a deal in which the city is allowing Taro East, owned by Philip Services Corp., to pump an estimated 29 million litres of stored leachate through the Woodward Avenue treatment plant which empties into Red Hill Creek and Hamilton Harbour.

The plant also receives leachate from the old Upper Ottawa Street dump, the operating Glanbrook municipal landfill site, and the closed Taro West landfill.

The commissioner's office ruled Clark and D'Angelo's application valid and sent it to the ministry June 3, giving Stockwell, Clark's cabinet colleague, 60 days to decide whether to carry out the requested review.

Lapp said the commissioner's role now is to monitor how Stockwell handles the matter.

"When the minister has made a decision, one way or another, we will go through it with a fine-tooth comb, looking at what and how the minister did. We will analyse whether the decision was made within the scope of the EBR (Environmental Bill of Rights).

"The commissioner then brings the issue to the legislature in his annual report, putting it in the hands of the elected representatives of the people, providing a public accounting of what has been done and how."

Clark and D'Angelo argue landfill leachate -- rainwater contaminated by toxic chemicals as it seeps through buried waste -- shouldn't be pumped into city sewers because conventional sewage treatment plants aren't designed to handle it. They also say it's wrong, for the same reason, to let industrial plants negotiate agreements to put overstrength wastewater into sewer systems without pre-treatment to remove heavy metals and toxic chemicals.

Clark says: "The metals bind to solids that are removed and spread on farmland, while the soluble substances flow through to the harbour and the lake (in Hamilton's case)."

Paul Muldoon, a Hamilton native who heads the Canadian Environmental Law Association, says Clark's leachate argument makes sense and he's pleased to see him using the Environmental Bill of Rights, "but we also expect him to exert his ministerial influence by trying to convince cabinet it's time this got done."

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Tories, frustrated Brad Clark at odds over landfill guck