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Northeastern Ontario Faces Threat of Adams Mine Dump ... Again

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Northeastern Ontario Faces Threat of Adams Mine Dump ... Again Northeastern Ontario Faces Threat of Adams Mine Dump ... Again A highly controversial proposal to ship Toronto's garbage 8 hours north for dumping in an abandoned open pit mine has been pushed back into the limelight, amid a rash of controversies and charges of unfair dealing. Secret land deals, million dollar political donations and interference from the highest level of government have all been part of the picture as garbage entrepreneur and recently convicted tax evader Gordon McGuinty of Notre Development tries once again to lure Toronto trash away from the waste company currently contracted to ship the municipality's solid waste to private landfills in Michigan. When the City of Toronto walked away from the deal in the fall of 2000 because of liability concerns, local residents breathed a sigh of relief, after having fought the deal for more than decade. But accounts of meetings in February between Notre Development and CN Rail to map out a strategy to foment discontent over Toronto's shipping of garbage to Michigan signaled an end to that respite. In the intervening months tension has steadily built, as local activists and politicians drew the connecting lines between several powerful new players backing the most recent version of the Adams Mine deal. New on the scene is Mario Cortellucci, a multi-millionaire land developer in the Toronto region. Cortellucci is also the new owner of the Adams Mine, and the single largest donor to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, having donated over a million dollars since the Conservatives came to power in 1995. One of the issues at the heart of the current controversy is a land deal which would see the Province of Ontario sell Cortellucci 2,000 acres of land surrounding the mine pits - the land acquisition is key to the project going ahead - for just $22 per acre. Not only is this well below market price, but the Ministry of Natural Resources has failed to follow usual procedures. No public notice was given of the proposed disposition, and consultation with the affected Aboriginal communities did not take place. The deal is currently under review within the Ministry, and a local residents group is taking the case to the Ontario Ombudsmen for further investigation. The group is also accepting pledges to buy anywhere from one to ten acres for $30 per acre to "Save the North". They are assembling a counter-proposal to purchase the contested land package. Pledges started rolling in as soon as word went out, organizers say. At the same time, however, Cortellucci's claim to title for the original property is the subject of a $10 million law suit by waste giant Canada Waste Services. The CWS lawsuit is alleging that dump promoter Notre Development shouldn't have sold the Adams Mine site to the Cortellucci Group because CWS had a $4.6 million lien on the property, as well as a right of first refusal over any new Adams Mine dealings. Cortellucci hired a consultant this past spring to rally support for the Adams Mine and promote opposition to the shipment to Michigan, a move that coincided nicely with the Notre Development /CN Rail strategizing and with (then) Minister of the Environment Chris Stockwell's own enthusiasm for sending Toronto's garbage north. When the border closed briefly to Toronto garbage in mid-May, purportedly in response to concerns about Mad Cow disease, Stockwell responded by threatening to force other Ontario municipalities to take Toronto's garbage, saying "Toronto should find an alternative to shipping its garbage to Michigan". Stockwell has been an adamant supporter of the Adams Mine "option", even making it part of his failed run for party leadership. Toronto Works Committee chair Brad Duguid says that Toronto wants to solve its own garbage problems through recycling and new technologies to eliminate landfilling by 2010. Meanwhile, area farmers have been monitoring water levels in the pit, and recently released their findings, which support contentions made during a narrowly scoped environmental review that the pit would leak. Evidence assembled by the farmers shows that water levels at the Adams Mine pit have stabilized, meaning pit water is now freely flowing into the surrounding groundwater, as had been predicted by independent experts who reviewed the dump proposal. The Adams Mine dump scheme envisions a million tonnes of solid waste per year being dumped into an abandoned open pit mine. The highly fractured pit is 55 stores deep, and is sunk 300 feet into the water table, at the height of land between the Arctic and Great Lakes watersheds. The 300 million litres of contaminated leachate that would be pumped from the garbage filled pits each year would be released into the Lake Temiskaming watershed, which forms the upper reaches of the Ottawa River. Local residents of this farming region are concerned about the surface water impacts, but also the impacts on groundwater, given the highly fractured nature of the pit and the predictions by several experts that the purported "hydraulic containment" will fail, and contaminants will escape through the pit walls, impacting local and regional groundwater resources. In response to the farmers releasing their monitoring information, the Adams Mine consortium has taken out a full-page ad in the local paper titled "Shame On You" and calling farm president John Vanthof and the Temiskaming Federation of Agriculture liars. Notre Development has also threatened the farmers with legal action, contending that the farmers caused damage to the company by gathering this evidence without the permission of the promoters and by presenting the evidence publicly. Northwatch News Spring / Summer 2003 .
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