Incinerator expansion delayed

By Chris Jones/The Oshawa Express

Dramatics surrounding Durham’s incinerator once again surround regional council, as council has decided to hold off on approving any expansion until June.

At their March 27 meeting, regional council requested staff complete a report on a potential expansion for May.

Staff are hoping to receive permission to conduct an environmental assessment (EA) in order to expand the Durham York Energy Centre’s capacity to 250,000 tonnes per year.

As of right now, the incinerator processes up to 140,000 tonnes per year, but council recently supported a staff request to seek provincial approval to expand up to 160,000 tonnes.

Wendy Bracken, a long-time critic of the incinerator, passionately advocated against a capacity expansion.

“You need more information to do your due diligence, and you need to consult,” Bracken said to council. “It’s really inappropriate what’s happening and undemocratic. Key stakeholders have not been consulted – the public, advisory committees, municipalities, host communities.”

“If you go forward today, it will be predetermining the major study outcome of the long-term waste management study before it even begins. That’s just not right,” she continued.

Bracken also noted the region hasn’t asked the opinion of the energy-from-waste advisory committee, of which she is a member.

Mirka Januskiewicz, director of waste management services, said an EA would aid in the outlining of how “the process will evolve.”

She said an EA would also assist to outline risks and opportunities from the expansion, as well as the financial structure.

Oshawa’s Ward 5 regional councillor Brian Nicholson, said he was experiencing “déjà vu.”

“The same process today is the same process started two decades ago when we started the first part of the incinerator,” Nicholson said. There was a thousand assurances that everybody would be consulted, we had 144 meetings and everybody said don’t build it, but we ended up building it.”

Nicholson also expressed concern there are only four current regional councillors who were part of the process of starting the incinerator.

He asked what confidence can the public have the new EA will answer all questions about expanding the incinerator if the previous one failed to do so.

Bracken responded by saying she doesn’t have a lot of confidence because consultants who were part of an energy-from-waste coalition put together the reports from the last EA.

“It was always a rosy picture, and the hard stuff wasn’t in there,” she said. “They chose toxicity reference values that were criticized by peer reviewers.”

She noted expanding the incinerator is an extremely important decision, and she believes it warrants more discussion.

“[Expanding the incinerator] would be reckless, it would be undemocratic, and it would be risky,” said Bracken.