A national advocacy group is calling out the Ford government over its plan to fast-track the reopening of a dormant landfill in Dresden.
Officials with Environmental Defence call provincial legislation to eliminate the need for a full environmental assessment on the Irish School Road property shameful, and say Bill 5 would cause devastating impacts on the Sydenham River’s most species-rich area.
“The Sydenham is a well-documented biological hotspot that is home to at least 33 species-at-risk,” a statement from the group reads. “If the dump is built, toxic substances and chemicals could leach into Molly’s Creek and the Sydenham. This would contaminate critical habitats and threaten some of Ontario’s rarest species like the Eastern spiny softshell turtle and Salamander mussel, pushing them closer to the brink of extinction.”
The province cited the need to provide additional waste capacity in Ontario due to the threat of US tariffs in its legislation to remove the need for an EA.
However, officials with Environmental Defence say Premier Doug Ford is showing his government’s ‘pave-it-over’ approach that prioritizes harmful infrastructure projects over environmental protection.
