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The region is not rolling out the welcome mat for biosolids from Pembroke’s pollution control centre (PCC).
A standing-room-only crowd of about 170 people packed the Memorial Hall in Cobden Wednesday evening for a public meeting to look at a proposal to rezone a 45-acre property to permit the construction of a biosolids storage facility.
Kevin Mooder, an environmental planner with Jp2g Consultants, explained the concept to council and audience and outlined the steps that had led to the development of the proposal as well as the implementation of the plan.
“One of the main misconceptions is that biosolids are the same as septage,” he said. “Biosolids have been treated in an anaerobic digester and dewatered.”
He explained that a storage facility is needed because the Nutrient Management Act (NMA) prohibits spreading of sewage biosolids for approximately 240 days from Dec. 1 to March 31 or when fields are frozen and snow-covered and when the fields are planted.
There must be a separate area for newly-delivered material.
“Each load is analyzed and it takes two to three weeks to get the results, so it must be stockpiled until the results are received,” he said.
“Good” loads go into storage for ultimate use as fertilizer. “Bad” loads go to the landfill site.
The PCC produces approximately 12 tonnes of dried sewage biosolids per working day. That amounts to 2,120 tonnes or approximately 2,650 cubic metres over 240 days.
“Without a storage facility, the sewage biosolids are hauled to a landfill for disposal, whereby they are lost as a nutrient source for land application and reduce the capacity of the landfill site,” said Mr. Mooder. “The agricultural community would then lose a source of high quality nutrient material and require commercial fertilizer applications to enhance crop yield which increases crop input costs.”
He said farmers around Pembroke have been accepting the city’s biosolids since 1969 and noted that, in the absence of a storage facility, the material could be trucked to Toronto to be burned, or to Ottawa to a facility that accepts it.
“Long distance solutions are becoming less amenable to the citizens of Renfrew County,” he said.
Before developing the proposal, the city looked at a number of sites including the existing PCC, city-owned sites on Jean Avenue, Quarry Road and the Brundage Farm and it its industrial park. It also looked at the Westmeath, Cobden and Ross waste disposal sites in Whitewater Region, the Whitewater Region industrial park on the Greenwood Road, the Ottawa Valley Waste Recovery Centre (OVWRC), and at 16 existing “soil conditioning sites” owned by private landowners. One was the property owned by Kyle Dickson which was the subject of the rezoning application.
The short list consisted of the Dickson property, the OVWRC, the Ross landfill site in Whitewater and the Whitewater industrial park. Mr. Mooder assured the audience that all loading and unloading of material would take place inside the structure and that there would be a weir to collect surface water around the site to prevent material from washing onto neighbouring land.
His attempts at reassurance were rebuffed by a resident of the area, David McGonegal, an agrologist.
“My family has farmed there since 1830,” he said. “My father used to own that farm.”
He talked about the risk posed by the facility.
“Anyone who took the pesticide course knows that risk equals toxicity plus exposure,” he said. “Working the material into the soil within a short period would minimize the risk. This facility would increase exposure by bringing more product to a given location on a weekly basis, increasing the potential toxicity. The risk would increase exponentially.”
He questioned claims that the material would be safe once it arrived at the storage facility.
“The residents around the Love Canal (a chemical dump site) thought they were safe and some died,” he said. “We used to think asbestos was safe and many people died. We thought urea formaldehyde foam insulation in homes was safe. We were told it was safe to feed bone, blood and meat meal to our livestock and now how we wish we hadn’t gone down that road.”
He explained that there’s no way to control what enters the sewage system.
“Housewives – if there’s a problem, down the toilet it goes,” he said. “People in the country are a little more cautious because we think about what we put into our septic systems.”
He also raised alarms about substances such as hormones, protozoa and dioxins, which would survive the treatment process.
“The good news is that prions (the causative agents for mad cow disease) are not present, because the odds of them getting into the system are low,” he said. “But rats and mice like that environment.” He said there would be little assurance the material would not be recontaminated by rats, birds, or insects, once it was in the storage facility.
He pointed out that a creek “where many a child caught his first and subsequent fish,” runs through the property and on through neighbouring properties, continuing on through the Westmeath Provincial Park and into the Ottawa River.
He also raised concerns about the township road over which trucks hauling the biosolids would have to pass.
He suggested the city should locate the plant within its own boundaries.
“There was a plan to locate it in Pembroke’s industrial park, but the rascally residents of that area found that plan unacceptable,” he said.
He added that the obvious site would be the OVWRC, which is already geared to dealing with waste and which has adequate roads to accommodate the truck traffic.
Wayne Campbell, who with his wife, Carol, has for many years operated a science camp across the road from the subject property, suggested that a public liaison committee might be formed so that residents would be better informed about issues that concern them.
“We’ve been told this has been in the planning for years and it’s all news to us,” he said.
Whitewater Mayor Don Rathwell said he wasn’t aware of the plan until a month and a half ago.
Despite the purported benefits in terms of nutrients for agriculture, local farm groups do not support the proposal.
“We’re not against spreading biosolids,” said Donna Campbell, secretary treasurer of the Renfrew County Federation of Agriculture. “However, some farmers who have used them have found they’ve created more problems than they solved. Also, we don’t feel that Whitewater taxpayers should be responsible for the infrastructure when it’s Pembroke’s waste.”
Dave Mackay, local president of the National Farmers’ Union, also disagreed with the proposal.
“I’m a friend of Kyle’s, but we just can’t support this,” he said.
Beulah Wright, who served on councils in the former Westmeath Township and in Whitewater Region, acknowledged that Mr. Mooder was “doing his job” in presenting the most positive side of the story.
“But a lot of the people here are not soothed by his reassurances about the monitoring by officials,” she said. “If the Ministry of Agriculture and the health people had been doing their job, the Walkerton tragedy would not have happened.”
Deputy Mayor Ron Lowe told the crowd he would be opposing the re-zoning application.
“But I don’t want you walking out thinking ‘great – we won,’” he said. “We still have a problem. Right now we can truck our sewage to Ottawa, but they could cut us off at any time.”
Whitewater has sewage treatment plants in Cobden and Beachburg.
In the council meeting which followed, council unanimously voted against the rezoning. However, there follows a 20-day period during which the proponents may appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board.
One hundred and twenty-one area residents signed form letters opposing the rezoning, while another 392 signed a petition.
mzettler@thedailyobserver.ca
Article ID# 911101