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BY DAVID GONCZOL, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
June 25, 2011
An Alfred area businessman is struggling to find a place to put a growing pile of waste material from a West Quebec paper mill after Ontario’s Ministry of Environment ordered him to cease operations.
Jacques Gascon told the Citizen that he is contractually obliged to accept 2,900 tonnes a month of pulp and paper bio-solid waste from a paper mill in Masson, after signing a contract to haul the sludge to a site near Alfred, east of Ottawa.
He says he has “no choice” but to continue to honour his contract.
Meanwhile new provincial regulations for non-agriculturally sourced materials (NASM) prevent area farmers from using a sludge-based product Gascon makes until they comply with new usage rules that say they must complete and receive approval for a NASM plan with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs.
As a result there is a growing stockpile of unsold sludge that has neighbours unhappy and ministry officials regularly visiting the site.
For their part, ministry officials allege that Gascon has ignored an order last month to stop bringing sludge to his mixing site. The ministry also alleges that he failed to comply with an order to remove existing stockpiles. A ministry spokesperson says the sludge is not an environmental threat if properly managed, and, in fact, benefits area farm fields. The official said however that in the ministry’s opinion Gascon is not meeting handling and storage regulations.
“We did go out to the site and the material continues to be received at the site after we had issued the order for it to stop being received so that is why we are now looking at an investigation,” said Mark Rabbior, a ministry spokesman.
“Our first and foremost concern is (to ensure) that the site isn’t posing a significant risk to the community,” said Rabbior, adding that potential run off from the site is a major concern. MOE documents allege that Gascon has not complied with orders to make several changes to his property to ensure run off does not enter nearby watercourses.
Gascon has also failed to convince the Ministry of the Environment that emissions from a kiln he has already built to process his product will be within legally safe limits.
“If you’re going to be burning materials such as this you have to have approval from us to do that,” said Rabbior. The ministry has ruled that the kiln could not be used.
An e-mail from Jason Ryan, the MOE’s Ottawa district manager, to an environmental activist opposed to the sludge project and shared with the Citizen indicates that the ministry is preparing another order demanding that Gascon remove sludge from a second site in the area. Late last week the sludge could be found in piles at different sites in the Alfred area. One large pile sat within sight of the environmentally sensitive Alfred Bog, a nationally recognized wetland.
Another MOE investigation has been launched into the alleged burning of waste material at the kiln site by Gacon’s company in contravention of the Environmental Protection Act.
This is not Gascon’s first encounter with the Ministry of the Environment. On March 18, 2010, Les Entreprises H.D.J.S. Gascon Limitee/Limited was fined $7,000 and Jacques Gascon was fined $1,000 after pleading guilty to one violation each under the Environmental Protection Act. In September 2008 the company demolished a commercial building and removed the waste using its own vehicles. Some of the waste was taken to an aggregate pit owned by the company and licensed as an aggregate pit but not a landfill by the Ministry of Natural Resources.
On Oct. 3, 2008, a ministry inspection of the aggregate pit revealed about eight truck loads of recently burned demolition waste material.
Ministry documents from frustrated investigators highlight instances where e-mails, phone calls and requests for information are either ignored or not acted upon by Gascon.
The new NASM rules and pressure from the MOE mean Gascon must now place his sludge in an approved site like a farmer’s field with an approved NASM plan or a provincially regulated landfill site with a certificate to accept pulp and paper bio-solids (sludge).
Ironically, ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan said that the ministry has reviewed data and sample analysis of the sludge provided by the White Birch Paper Company mill and found it posed no danger to the environment.
Jordan said pulp and paper bio-solids are recognized as having benefits for farm fields because they introduce nutrients and reduce erosion by increasing water retention.
She said Gascon and the farmers using his product since 2008 escaped regulation before January because the sludge was mixed with other organic materials. The new regulations now include any material which includes any NASM.
Gascon is also facing opposition from people living near his business who are working with Toronto environmentalist Maureen Reilly, who is fighting to keep sludge off farmland.
Marc Daigneault, Chief Administrative Officer for the Township of Alfred and Plantagenet, said residents have been complaining about odours, dust and air emissions from materials they say have already been burned in the kiln. Daigneault said municipal officials and local residents have already held a community meeting with ministry officials to vent their concerns.
Gascon takes issue with the use of the term sludge, saying he only uses “biosolids.
“You can call the ministry if you want to. They will tell you this stuff is really good stuff,” said Gascon. He refers to sludge as “city stuff.”
He also said that he is not stockpiling the material on his property.“I don’t pile on my property,” he said, but he would not say where the material was that had caused so much conern to the MOE. The MOE said their biggest concerns are at a site Gascon uses to mix the sludge with other material.
He said if people like Reilly are opposed to the use of biosolids on farm fields they should convince the MOE they are wrong about the safety of the product instead of attacking a businessman who is working with a legal product.
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