Help Toronto Plan How To Reduce and Manage Its Post Diversion Garbage

Help Toronto plan how to reduce and manage its post-diversion garbage

The City of Toronto is conducting an environmental study, referred to as an Environmental Assessment (EA), to decide a plan for reducing and managing its leftover garbage (post-diversion residual waste). This EA initiative continues in conjunction with Toronto’s recent plan to purchase the Green Lane Landfill near St. Thomas, Ontario. The proposed landfill purchase, which is subject to signing a final purchase agreement within 90 days, further supports the City’s agreement to stop transporting garbage across the U.S. border to Michigan by 2010. In planning for its long term waste management strategy, the City remains committed to aggressively pursuing enhanced waste reduction programs to achieve mandated waste diversion from landfill targets. Shifting dependency off landfill disposal extends the life of the landfill and its associated revenue benefits and respects the hierarchy of the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle).

The first phase of the EA involves preparing the EA’s Terms of Reference, which helps establish a framework for how Toronto will conduct the EA. Participating in the upcoming rounds of public consultation provides interested stakeholders the opportunity to learn more, ask questions, offer comments, voice concerns and help Toronto decide the plan for the EA.

Dates: Public Consultation Round One meetings take place in Toronto from September 26 to October 26

Times: All but one of the public consultation meetings are in the evening from 6:30 to 10 p.m.
(the exception is the Saturday meeting on October 21 from 12:30 to 4 p.m.)

Locations: Public consultation meetings will take place at various locations across the City

For more information, including a complete list of meeting dates and locations, visit www.toronto.ca/ceat. Additional information is also available at www.torontoceat.org.

Please call 416-392-9365 or TTY: 416-397-0831, or e-mail works_consultation@toronto.ca to register.

Sheppard Leslie update

Stage 2 is approaching completion. The switch to Stage 3 of the intersection work is scheduled for Monday Oct. 2, 2006 weather permitting. Upon completion of the Stage 3 setup, north/south pedestrian crossings will be provided for on the west side of the intersection only - no crossing on the east side of the intersection will be permitted for safety reasons. This is the reverse situation to Stage 1.

All the girders are in place for the new bridge at the Hospital and the contractor is working on completing the abutment wingwalls and parapet walls.

Lobbyist Registry

While I voted along with 17 other councillors and the Mayor begin the Mandatory Lobbyist Registry, the mattered has been deferred for further refinement by the Integrity commissioner and the City Manager.

In the meantime, I will continue to keep a voluntary registry.

Waste Stability for 20 Years

It saddens me that in a time when there is great news for Toronto, and on some levels for all of Ontario, I must get on the blog to debunk a lot of misinformation.

With the purchase of Greenlane Landfill, Toronto is now protected from disaster should the Michigan border close prematurely. We are also covered with enough disposal capacity to serve us while we complete our current environmental assessment process, being carried out by 25 appointed citizens and professionals to find the permanent solution to our residual waste. There is ample time to gain all the necessary approvals for whatever is their recommendation, and, of course, the time to build whatever is proposed by this environmental assessment team.

For those who believe we should be utilizing New and Emerging Technology to deal with our residual waste, this landfill represents the ability, at long last, to contemplate it. No city in the world currently using such technologies has ever gone down that road without it taking 10 years from the point contemplation to the first load of garbage being fed into the new system. The purchase of Greenlane means we can stop lunging from one stop gap to another, each successively more expensive, and hunker down to the work of reviewing these technologies. Our Environmental Assessment team will be finalizing all of their research on the matter in 2008 and then the long process of going to you, the community, and to determine where best to site whatever they propose will begin. In any case, such technologies produce some residual that still requires some landfill.

While all this is going on, Toronto will be safe in the knowledge of our fully-owned disposal capacity at Greenlane until the process is done and, all the while, collecting revenues from all those municipalities currently dumping in Greenlane. Given this great news, this morning I am especially sad to see my colleagues manipulating the public with selective tidbits of information while omitting other salient points.

Friday afternoon was the first time a possibility came about to purchase Greenlane as a fully expanded site, with a completed environmental assessment and a full certificate of approval from the Province. Let me emphasize, before that point, such an offer was truly never before the City. Before that certificate of approval was finally awarded the current owner, the landfill expansion was the subject of 100 local public consultations. If Toronto is to be responsible to the people of Ontario, why would we bluster into town and purchase a landfill before any of that important approval process was complete? Furthermore, why would we expose ourselves to the endless legal expense of buying first and getting approvals later? We learned that lesson in Adam's mine, which was a "theory of a place to start a landfill", not a long-practicing landfill with all necessary approvals and assurances such as we find in Greenlane.

Rules of confidentiality in the Municipal Act surround land acquisition to protect the vendor more than the purchasing city. Should all the terms of the offer be placed in the public eye and then turned down, the vendor then loses the opportunity to sell to others with any control over his terms. Confidentiality is heavily enforced with any land acquisition we undertake. Some individuals who have been privy to the information in the Greenlane deal have already demonstrated why the owner of Greenlane, Bob McCaig, had every right to be adamant about the confidentiality and adamant about the speed with which staff must to present the deal to us and get an answer before any leak occurred. Quite frankly, it is being proven in the media, that there are those among us who don't care to keep secrets and don't care how much they expose the City to litigation, especially when they are in the midst of an election.

I ask my many friends and neighbours in Don Valley East to scroll back up to the earlier paragraphs in this post and be comforted that we now have a waste plan and the means to execute it. I ask the residents of Elgin County to be comforted by the buffer lands surrounding Greenlane and know that Toronto has learned some important lessons about treatment of neighbours from our Keele Valley landfill experience. We will be working with you and contributing to the good health as well as the economic growth of your communities.

As my good friend and colleague, Brian Ashton says, "If you are the mayor of a city with 3 million people and a guy walks up and offers you a gold mine or a lndfill site, take the landfill!"

Leslie Sheppard Construction update

Councillor Carroll's office received this staff update on September 13/06.

The pre-cast concrete girders for the new bridge by NYGH will be delivered and erected on the nights of Sept 14 and 18. These will be erected at night and Leslie St between Esther Shiner and Sheppard will be reduced to 1 lane in each direction starting at 9PM. These girders are being delivered later than originally anticipated.

Stage 2 of the work at the Leslie/Sheppard intersection is approaching completion and Stage 3 be implement on or about the night of Oct 2. Stage 3 is a duplication of Stage 1 from a traffic setup perspective. The north/south pedestrian crossing on the east leg of the intersection will have to be closed for safety reasons.

Work on the entire project is behind schedule. All work except for the landscaping and the widening of Leslie St should be completed this year. A lot of the progress will depend on how soon winter arrives this year. We are only 6 weeks from November and that is when snow ploughing operations commence.

Community Alert - Toronto Police Services 33 Division

Potential Sex Offender Alert


Please be aware of a potential sex offender that has been seen in 33 Division. Several incidents have occurred where a male has approached young girls, on or near school routes and during school hours, particularily around the lunch hour. He approaches his victim's in his vehicle and asks for directions, then is seen masturbating.

The male is described as Male white, 40-50 years of age. He has been described has being obese with a large belly, and thinning hair. His vehicle is described as a grey or blue/grey mini- van and the rear markers have been observed to be concealed on these occasions.

If you have any information regarding this matter please contact the Police immediately.

You can also contact the Crime Prevention Officer at 33 Division, PC Kelly Downie if you have any information at 416-808-3395.

Graffiti Clean Up at Pleasant View

Staff sent the update below on the graffiti tagging on Pleasant View Centre last week. It's terribly important to let us know whenever you wake up to discover fresh graffiti in the community. The fresher it is when we call it in to staff, the easier it is to deal with. Prompt removal also discourages additional hits as these graffiti artists are prefer surfaces where they know their work will stay on display for a while.

From Staff re Pleasant View:
Good afternoon Councillor Carroll, over the past week, we have had limited success in
removing the graffiti from the south and east walls. We have purchased an exterior acrylic paint that matches the brick colour and will paint the lower portion of the two walls this Friday. The paint will make any future tagging easier to remove.
I apologize for the delay.