Centre for Civic Governance

Alison Million, Simcoe.com  April 6, 2009  Opponents of Simcoe County’s Site 41 landfill plan are concerned after a newspaper report that a dump in British Columbia is leaking toxic chemicals after only 20 years. The article, which ran last month in The Globe and Mail, indicated the liners used at the Cache Creek landfill to contain leachate – a liquid that forms from the percolation of water through refuse – are leaking harmful chemicals 180 years ahead of schedule and putting the drinking supply at risk.
Site 41 opponent Steve Ogden said he is incensed – and certain the same thing will happen here.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Site 41 will fail, and once it leaks there’s no way we can fix it. There is no liner that doesn’t leak,” he said, adding he believes the leachate will enter the water system. “Once it gets into the water system, it’s not really easy to clean it. It’s there for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
Ogden said experts have found toxins at least six kilometres away from the Cache Creek site.
“It didn’t start leaking yesterday,” he noted. “The likelihood of it leaking earlier than later is probably upon us.”
County officials, however, have repeatedly said they are not worried. Rob McCullough, director of environmental services, said Site 41 will use the thick natural clay base that’s already in place, along with a high-density polyethylene liner.
“That is one of the extra protective features we’ve added. We didn’t have to, (but) we decided to optimize the site,” he said. “It’s another protective feature because it’s both cutting down on the amount of water coming into the site and making yet another barrier for the leachate from getting out.”
The site will also have a monitoring network and a system for leachate collection, including pipes and gravel that allows workers to remove leachate.
Ogden said even with the added precaution of the plastic liner, the natural clay is fractured, leaving the county to rely on the upward gradient of groundwater in the area.
He warned if water does make it through the clay base, it could travel at least 700 metres a year. He added the upward gradient is absent up to six months out of every year. “That means if it starts to leak, (the leachate) can move laterally towards the McDonald Creek.”
McCullough, however, disagreed.
“We don’t believe that there are fractures in the clay. The surficial clay does have fractures in it, but we did a whole storm-water pond that’s a quarter the size of the cell we’re going to put in this year…. We know what we’re getting into and we didn’t find any concern.”
McCullough said they have never had any monitoring where the site did not have an upward gradient.
“No matter what we do and the number of safety features we have at the site, we’re also required to look at worst-case situations,” he said. “One of those would be a weather event that would have the water gradients reverse for six months of the year.”
He said an engineering study determined such a situation would have no impact, even if the upward gradient were removed for six months out of the year.
“They weren’t saying it would happen. (They) tested what would happen if that were to happen. Unfortunately, the opponents of the site continue to misrepresent that to the public.”
Meanwhile, the life expectancy of the liner being used at Site 41 has been the subject of a number of studies, said McCullough.
“Plastic hasn’t been around that long to be able to determine how long it will last, (but) the engineered studies do look at an engineered life in the area of at least a couple hundred years.”
That being said, he acknowledged officials are assuming there will be small leaks.
“Anything manmade is subject to fail,” he said. “We know that there are going to be small leaks even right from the (beginning). We also know the site was approved without the liner – the liner is only an extra protective feature.
“We are working with a process that relies on both engineered solutions and natural solutions. We have confidence that, based on the number of protective features built into the site, that groundwater and surface water … will be protected.”
Carolynn Fishleigh, a Penetanguishene resident who drew attention to the B.C. landfill report, said with the Cache Creek example proving liners leak even when guaranteed for 200 years, officials need to pay attention.
“I know they’ve spent millions, but, if you’d spent millions on a cure for cancer and learned it was the wrong one, you’d stop giving it to people and you’d invest in something that would work,” she said. “That’s the logic they should be thinking about. It’ just so wrong to me to be putting all that garbage on water that is really our children’s and our grandchildren’s right.”