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You’d think that the NDP would be hypersensitive to the Shawnigan Lake soil issue.

Furstenau did, after all, win for the Greens what had been a historically safe NDP riding in the Cowichan Valley in the last election chiefly on the issue of cleaning up the toxic soil dump. And her deep resentment at how the previous Liberal government had ignored her community’s concerns was a key reason why the Greens chose to support the NDP minority government over the Liberals.

Were it not for Shawnigan Lake, Premier John Horgan might still be opposition leader.

But Heyman displayed no politicalsensitivitieswhen he announced Tuesdaythat approximately 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soil could remain in the ground as part of a closure plan at the site.

Instead, Heyman will allow the company, Cobble Hill Holdings, to make money trucking in almost 70,000 tonnes of industrial fill to cap the site, and then hope it follows a monitoring regime in years ahead to prevent against leaks into the water supply.

“I’m deeply disappointed with the decision they made,” Furstenau told The Sun. “He says the solution here is rigorous monitoring. I’ve heard that one before. It sounds very much like the same kind of language that we were getting from the previous minister.”

The landfill is directly uphill from the popular Shawnigan Lake, which is also the source of drinking water for roughly 12,000 people. The landfill already leaked once, in 2016. It was residents, not the company or government, that caught the problem.