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Public anger hinders firm from making case for site: official
A non-profit company set to begin operating a composting plant in Aylmer says the plan will be delayed, and could ultimately be derailed, by residents so opposed to it that they have threatened to lie down in front of trucks.
Nicole Desroches, vice-president of La Ressourcerie, said yesterday that public opposition to the plan is strong enough to have grabbed the attention of the company, which wants to compost yard waste and table scraps at the former Cook Road landfill site.
Ms. Desroches said there has been so much “hysteria and misinformation” about the composting plan that company officials have not been able to explain it in public.
“We are a community organization and if the community doesn’t agree with composting, it will be difficult for us to do it,” she said. “There is a lot of anger because of the way the site used to be managed.
“People are saying all kinds of things that aren’t true. When a few people are shouting their heads off, the rest don’t get chance to find out what the project is all about. There really aren’t any problems with the site now.”
In 1991, the regional government closed the landfill after neighbours said their well water stank and was undrinkable.
La Ressourcerie was approached by the city to do the composting work after Gatineau council rejected the only bid for the plant. That bid, submitted in April by GSI Environnement Inc. of Varennes, south of Montreal, was turned down, Councillor Alain Riel said, because the cost was too high and the company’s plant in L’Ange Gardien emits foul odours.
This month, Gatineau officials recommended La Ressourcerie operate the composting plant, even though it never submitted a bid, because it already composts Gatineau’s yard waste at a site on Cook Road.
The compost is to be spread on city parks and playgrounds and sold to consumers.
Ms. Desroches said Gatineau must soon have its own composting plant because Quebec law will require all municipalities to treat their own yard waste and table scraps by 2008.
“We are rethinking out strategy because some people are terrified about the dump and are saying they will lie down in front of the trucks,” she said. “I would like people to calm down so we can talk about the project instead of being shouted down at public meetings.”
Residents who live near the landfill complained for years about rodents and the stench of uncovered garbage.
“This whole area was contaminated by the dump,” said Jerry Alary, an opponent of the planned composting plant.
“Now here we are, 14 years later, and bureaucrats from Hull are in a hurry to find a composting centre because of pressure from the provincial government.”
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006