SOUTHWOLD TOWNSHIP, ONT.—There was a time when Monica Pennings could plan a barbecue free from fear of stench.

But life in certain parts of Southwold township has become less predictable now that the community is infused with all of Toronto’s garbage. Every weekday since 2011, 55 trucks of urban detritus destined for the Toronto-owned landfill arrive in the bucolic countryside of wooden red barns and old brick churches.

When that garbage rots, the smell that sometimes escapes — described as rotten-egg like, sulphuric and worse than the inside of a cow barn — haunts the nearby farmland like a noncommittal ghost, some days coming late at night, other times early in the morning — occasionally staying for hours, sometimes minutes, and sometimes not showing up for days.

When her family moved here 13 years ago, Pennings smelled the landfill a few times a year. Now, she knows the complaint number by heart.

“652-0909. Pretty sad, right?” she says.

In 2012, Toronto recorded 414 odour complaints. So far this year, complaints are down, but resentment remains: Three protests by Oneida youth have been held in front of the landfill. This past Monday, people held signs that read “Close the dump” and “Stop dumping your garbage here! Toronto!”

Ever since the Keele Valley landfill closed in 2002, nobody has taken kindly to Toronto’s 500,000 tonnes of yearly trash. A plan to ship garbage by train to the defunct Adams mine near Kirkland Lake fell apart over environmental concerns. When the city had a deal with Michigan, state legislators tried to shut the border to our festering investment in the local economy. In 2007, the city bought Green Lane Landfill in Southwold Township, near St. Thomas and London.

In recent years, this small community has lost major municipal revenue with the closure of a Ford assembly plant , the end of certain provincial grants, and the fact that the landfill reached its peak value in 2012. Toronto needs a home for its garbage, and Southwold needs the tax money, now more than ever.

But if this is a marriage — and local officials stress they are a host, not a partner — it is one of necessity, not love.

Even before Toronto was on the scene — really, ever since the landfill was first approved by the Ministry of Environment in 1978, it’s been a “love-hate relationship” with the township, according to local Councillor Grant Jones. The site closed in 1991 when it reached its approved capacity, but reopened in 1994, and various amendments since have allowed for expansion.

“The old joke is that the truckers (on Highway 401) are pulling their shirts up over their nose,” says Richard Lang, taking a break from building a flower planter at his home near the landfill.

Lang is on the public liaison committee, a holdover from the days when the landfill was private. He gives Toronto “full marks for sincerity” for its efforts to fix the problem, but says the smell remains unacceptable on the bad days.

For its part, the city is optimistic that gas-collection measures will reduce complaints. So far there have been 77 calls this year, a “drastic” decrease from last year.

“The good news there is we’re into the spring, where people’s windows are open, and we’ve gotten very few over the last month and a half,” said Jim Harnum, the general manager of solid waste in Toronto.

Trucks that arrive on site dump their load into a specially engineered clay-bottomed cell, where the garbage is compressed by a packer, which looks like a tractor with a steel drum wheel. Dirt is placed on top of newly flattened garbage. When more garbage is packed in, more dirt goes on top: a perpetual stack of garbage sandwiches, finished with a layer of dirt every night so no garbage is exposed.

The rotten-egg smell can be stirred up by work on site, or just in the natural decay of carbon, which produces methane. Wells drilled into the garbage act like a central vacuum system. Methane is sucked out of the garbage through a network of perforated pipes and fed into a flare where it is burned off. The better the city is at sucking that gas, the less it will smell for residents. The cells also have pipes at the bottom to collect liquid waste.

The complaint spike in 2012 can be traced to a dispute with a contractor in 2009, Harnum says. The dispute caused delays, infrastructure wasn’t installed right away, making it possible for more smell to escape. When Harnum came on in 2012, the city accelerated well construction.

Because of all the complaints that hot and humid summer, the environment ministry asked the city to improve the situation.

So, according to the ministry, the city purchased two large odour suppressant sprayers (the substance acts like Febreze, Harnum says), placed additional dirt cover on the landfill, and used extra cover on hot and humid days. The city also ended a contract with a slaughterhouse (meat already in decay emits more gas), and limited the amount of biosolids (digested sewage) coming to the site. (One truck a day comes in, usually between December and March, Harnum says).

Harnum said Toronto volunteered to do more than it was asked. They have installed more wells and hired a consultant to study where the odours are going and why, among other things.

“We want to eliminate the odours as much as we can,” he says.









Some members of Oneida Nation who live northwest of the landfill remain concerned about the environmental effects.

“We’re an agricultural people … and we’ve got our plants in the ground now and we’re always kind of wondering, is our groundwater safe? Is the land safe to be planting on?” asks Lo:t^ t Honyust, who has been involved in youth protests at the site.

The landfill has a system to collect leachate — the garbage-based liquid that leaks to the bottom of the cells. It is collected by pipes that line the gravel and clay bottom of the landfill and treated on site. Since opening in 1978, the landfill has not had any adverse impacts on water quality, Harnum said.

Southwold Mayor Jim McIntyre said the city has made “big strides” in battling odours and praised the recent infrastructure efforts. Councillor Jones says he is going to “wait and see” what happens this summer, when the weather heats up and more people are outside. Pennings says the smell is better than last year, but just the other night she opened her windows for some cool air, and “it smelled up the whole house.”

The quarterly community liaison meetings have become crowded affairs. At the last meeting in March, one person asked for compensation for the smell. A rebate is not on the table, McIntyre says.

Some are worried about property values. Kris Kewley , a local real estate broker, sold a house in the area a few years ago. He didn’t see the paperwork, but understood that his client was compensated by Toronto for the discrepancy between the sale value and the appraised value.

“My advice is to not move that close to it,” he says.

When the city bought the landfill it also bought nearby plots of land to create a buffer zone . If people live within two kilometres of the landfill and owned their home before 1998 (when a long-term expansion was approved), Toronto will honour an appraiser’s value for the house — either by making up the difference or buying the property.

Toronto has spent $3.3 million on local real estate.

It pays taxes on those sites, and of course, on the main landfill. The $1.6 million invoice for 2012 was the biggest part of the township’s tax base that year, according to the treasurer.

Toronto also pays a 5 per cent premium on the landfill’s gross revenue to a long-standing community trust that funds the liaison committee, pays for road maintenance related to the landfill, and funds local projects in places that send their waste to Green Lane.

Before Toronto was sending its trash to Green Lane, the Southwold mayor estimated that $500,000 was distributed yearly to community projects throughout the region. Since Toronto started adding its trash to the equation, the city pays $1.8 million a year to the fund.

The trust fund is a non-profit corporation. Toronto has a seat on the board, as does the Southwold mayor, two councillors, a citizen, and a person jointly nominated by St. Thomas and Elgin County. A detailed accounting is not publicly available.

The fund has been used to upgrade parks with new playground equipment, buy a fire truck and upgrade street lights. McIntyre said the fund also offset the costs of installing water lines around the landfill, so residents didn’t have to rely on well water.

Although Southwold holds the majority of seats, it’s not necessarily a fund to subsidize the town, Harnum said.

“We respect it. It’s a good thing. The city of Toronto is trying to do its part to improve the local community,” he says.

Harnum says there is enough space in the landfill to last until 2029. He is looking into other options, including sending up to 150,000 tonnes of the city’s waste to private landfills. Toronto has contingency contracts with three landfills in case Green Lane can’t accept waste.

“The garbage keeps coming to me,” he says. “I can’t stop it.”

Another idea is raising the price for private contractors who dump at the site, in an effort to save space for Toronto and local garbage.

“From a resident’s standpoint, do we want to fill it up as fast as we can and have all kinds of truck and odour issues?” he asks. “Or do we want to extend it as long as we can, and we’ll be your neighbour, but we’re trying to be better neighbours?”









Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Green Lane Customers

690,000 tonnes: total estimated for 2013

500,000 tonnes from the city of Toronto 100,000 tonnes from private sector. This is industrial, commercial and residential waste. 90,000 tonnes from other municipalities, including Guelph, Southwold and St. Thomas

Toronto payments to Green Lane Community Trust fund

2010 $736,500.91

2011 $1,805,863.34 (year Toronto began sending all its trash to Green Lane)

2012 $1,832,600.06

Complaints to Ministry of Environment

(Numbers include complaints the city received and complaints received directly by ministry.)

2004: 7

2005: 30

2006: 58

2007: 35 (Toronto buys landfill for $220.3 million)

2008: 32

2009: 92

2010: 76

2011: 88 (City begins sending all its trash)

2012: 418

2013: 71 (as of May 10)

Odour complaints to Toronto

(Figures from Green Lane’s annual report)

2011: 91

2012: 414