GFL to submit plan to lower waste pile at upper Stoney Creek’s Taro dump

“The idea is to have a solid plan in place to bring that down,” he told a Jan. 17 monthly online community update meeting hosted by GFL, required as part of an October ministry order related to the dump’s stench that caused a community uproar last summer.

“We’re assessing a lot of options and tools in our tool box to make that happen but that plan has to be received first, and that was outlined by the (ministry) officer in his inspection,” Burt said.

To lower the waste pile, GFL plans to extend the dump’s liner system by constructing new waste cells closer to Green Mountain Road, which it can only do once it reduces the site’s excess of leachate that the company and ministry blame for the odour problems.

Site manager Lorenzo Alfano said the company continues to truck a minimum of 500,000 litres of the waste liquid per week off-site, as required by the October ministry order, but can’t put a timeline for getting it down to acceptable levels.

“There’s been quite a bit of rain but we’ve made great strides,” he said, expressing hope work on the cells can start in March. “Once a cell is constructed, then we can review what we’re going to do with the (waste) piles.”

GFL and residents at the online meeting disagreed on whether the dump’s odour problems have been resolved by measures taken since October, including the installation of deodorizers and a carbon air scrubber by a leachate pumping station.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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Weekly online updates posted by the company since Nov. 7 have stated that “no leachate-related odours have been detected” even though Burt said the ministry has received about 50 complaints in the past month.

“The reason why it was reported that way is because the complaints that we received are not from leachate,” Alfano said. “Some of the complaints received were just from materials that were received from the tipping face and that were covered.”

But resident Kathleen Morrison said she’s filed several complaints in the past couple of weeks and the odours were the same as before, suggesting GFL has a new problem if waste is now the source.

“I don’t think anybody would disagree that things have improved, that the smell is not as awful and that it doesn’t linger as long and go as far,” she said.

“For GFL to be putting out to the community every single week that there have been no odours from leachate is disingenuous and just a full-on lie, and it really is not doing very much to garner our confidence in what they’re saying.”

Burt said people may still be noticing “intermittent odours” when buying gas or coffee at shops on Upper Centennial Parkway because they’re near where leachate is pumped into trucks taking it off-site.

But he said the ministry isn’t getting complaints from residential areas, as it did throughout the summer and into October.

“I hear the concerns,” Burt said, noting odours from waste are among issues to be addressed by the plan to lower the mound at the northwest corner.

Alfano said GFL remains committed to building an on-site leachate pre-treatment plant as a permanent fix to the odours and is scheduled to hold a preconsultation meeting on Feb. 12 with the city and ministry.

Dave Richmond, GFL’s vice-president for Eastern Canada, said the company still hasn’t determined why odours suddenly became a persistent issue last year because it’s focused efforts on eliminating them.

“When we can explain what the heck happened, we’ll be very pleased, very pleased to share that with folks,” he said. “It’s going to take some time.”