Durham Region, March 10, 2009 -- Despite often repeated promises to address the public's health and safety concerns, Durham Region councillors on the Joint Waste Management Group (JWMG), the Durham/York EFW incinerator steering committee, voted today against ambient air monitoring in the vicinity of the proposed incinerator in Durham Region. They were adopting the recommendations of the Environmental Assessment Study consultants Jacques Whitford Ltd.
Although there are no recorded votes at committees, council watchers present were not able to see any Durham councillors' hands raised in support of a motion to undertake additional ambient air monitoring based on best practices elsewhere. Durham's JWMG members in attendance were Works Committee chair and JWMG co-chair Charlie Trim (Clarington), councillors Scott Crawford (Ajax), Gerry Emm (Whitby), and Rick Johnson (Pickering). Nester Pidwerbecki (Oshawa), Howie Herrema (Uxbridge) and Durham Council chairman Roger Anderson attended the meeting as alternate members.
The Jacques Whitford report dated February 16, 2009, entitled "Review of International Best Practices of Environmental Surveillance for Energy-From-Waste Facilities", concludes in the executive summary (p.xii) that "the findings of the review do not justify implementation of ambient air monitoring (Option 2) or environmental monitoring (soil, vegetation, agricultural products) (Option 3). In addition, we would strongly recommend that human biomonitoring (Option 4) not be adopted for the proposed Durham/York EFW facility."
Jacques Whitford is shown as being a member on the web site of the Canadian Energy From Waste Coalition (CEFWC) whose mission statement states in part: “We stand for the promotion, adoption and implementation of energy-from-waste (EFW) technology for the management of residual materials” (www.energyfromwaste.ca). The principal funders of the
CEFWC are Covanta Energy, Veolia Montenay and Waste Management/Wheelabrator Technologies. All three coalition funders were pre-qualified vendors eligible to submit a bid for the Durham project.
The JWMG did vote to recommend soil sampling based on best practices. No action was taken around human biomonitoring.
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