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The urban snow dump at the intersection of the O-Train and the Transitway in Hintonburg is at best a case of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of Ottawa Council and at worst a looming environmental disaster. More importantly, its continuing operation is an affront to the hardworking residents and seniors who live cheek by jowl with the facility.
Logging hundreds, sometimes thousands, of trucks dumping snow each night and all night during the winter, the dump must be considered one of the most pressing urban issues Ottawa has—one that must be solved before the snow flies next November.
In the short term, few would disagree that operations at night must cease. In the medium term, the site must be closed to allow proper urban development to take place.
There is currently a $250,000 study planned to find ways to make the facility permanent. Residents were assured in the 1990s that the dump would be temporary, but are now being told the promise was actually that the facility was “temporarily not permanent.”
The bafflegab from the operations people at City Hall is at odds with uses for the site envisioned by city planners in each version so far of the city’s official plan, including the new one currently being drafted.
Mayor Bob Chiarelli has promised Hintonburg and Mechanicsville residents a different study, this one a planning study designed to find more appropriate uses for this valuable land. The mayor’s vision, one that replaces a costly, toxic and noisy landfill with tax-generating shops and homes that would have the best access to mass transit in the city, makes sense from both fiscal and quality-of-life perspectives.
As it currently stands, the dump’s garbage-laden snow collected from the entire downtown core and environs melts straight into the Ottawa River. According to a study commissioned by the city and completed last April: “Meltwater flows directly into a ditch or storm-sewer catch basin that outlets into the Ottawa River. There is no grass or buffer area between the snow and the ditch to settle out sediments … the (snow dump facility) is located on an old landfill and storage yard including drum storage of chemicals.”
Ottawa residents should be outraged that city council continues to let this major polluter operate in a densely populated urban area.
The many residents nearby, often within 50 metres of the site, are the most immediately affected. Night after night the trucks come, tailgates slamming, snow blowers humming, tires and engines rumbling, lights flashing. The dump’s sleepless neighbours have described it as “torture.”
Some in Ottawa believe that the $370,000 a year it would cost to truck the snow to a more appropriate facility—the number comes from the city’s own report released in April 2002—is too much. But spending $250,000 to study making the dump permanent, and then another $4.4 million (again, the city’s own estimate) in immediate capital costs to make the bare minimum of improvements, is good money thrown after bad. It is also a false economy.
In reality, if the dump can be removed and homes, shops, tourist attractions and public facilities can occupy this urban space adjacent to Lebreton Flats—as city planners are increasingly inclined to favour—the cost of finding alternative dump sites could evaporate overnight when weighed against new tax revenue.
The location should generate more than $3 million year after year in taxes while using existing infrastructure. Hundreds of residents could be housed in new homes inside the Greenbelt instead of further exacerbating the traffic and infrastructure problems we’re now experiencing, while at the same time creating a mini business boom.
The political choice seems clear, and councillors have an easy victory at hand by closing the site for minimal cost while generating new revenues associated with development. Council should use the $250,000 available for study costs to begin the process of turning the dump into productive and vibrant urban space instead of perpetuating the blight.
Jeff Leiper is a director of the Hintonburg Community Association