With the community still desperate for answers about a proposed landfill and waste recycling facility planned for a property north of Dresden, a Chatham-Kent councillor is proposing a community meeting hosted by the municipality.
During the communications items of Monday’s council meeting, North Kent councillor Rhonda Jubenville proposed having some sort of open house to provide the community with information.
Bruce McAllister, Chatham-Kent’s general manager of community development, said there is always a potential to have a meeting, but suggested it happen after Chatham-Kent makes its upcoming submissions to the province about the project and after a report comes to council in April.
York1 Environmental Waste Solutions is asking for provincial approval to expand a landfill and create a regenerative recycling facility. They have held two community meetings over the past few weeks.
Chatham-Kent chief administrative officer Michael Duben, said having staff answer questions at a public open house wouldn’t be fair, because the proposal isn’t a municipal one but York1’s.
“It would be difficult for us to have a public meeting and put staff in front of people who have all these questions that the proponents have all the answers to,” Duben said. “It’s not that we don’t want to be transparent, we just don’t have the answers.”
McAllister said the municipality is planning a press release at the end of this week to make public Chatham-Kent’s submission to the Ministry for Environment about their concerns with York1’s proposal to increase the size of the waste processing facility at the site as well as the amount of waste they can receive, as well as to allow operations at the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
He said after they make their submissions to the province about York1’s proposed plans, they will issue a report to council in April.
McAllister said after they had high-level discussions with York1 in 2022, they later asked the company to provide additional details regarding the overall scope and proposed uses for the property, the outline of the provincial approval requirements as well as an outline of the proposed public consultation process.
“I can say that none of these additional details were ever received in advance of receiving the initial Ministry (of Environment) posting notice that was received earlier in February of this year,” McAllister said.
He said to date no formal planning pre-consultation meetings have been held between York1 and municipal staff and no planning applications have been filed yet to the municipality.