First Nations community seeks financial compensation from city's landfill
Green Lane site concerns Munsee-Delaware Nation
City officials say a First Nations community seeking compensation for the damage Toronto's new dump may do to its lands has until next April to sign a profit-sharing deal.
Two of three First Nations communities near Green Lane Landfill southwest of London signed the deal before the dump sale went through last year, but the Munsee-Delaware Nation of the Thames did not.
In a release this week, Chief Patrick Waddilove said his community, which draws its water untreated from wells, still seeks its own settlement "for consequences to be suffered" by the community's 538 members and their 1,054-hectare reserve.
The Munsee-Delaware, like the neighbouring Oneida and the Chippewa First Nations of the Thames, get their water from an aquifer under the Thames River. But unlike its neighbours, the Munsee-Delaware lack a treatment system for their water and cannot afford one, Waddilove said in a letter to the city this month.
But Geoff Rathbone, Toronto's general manager of solid waste, said the landfill, first opened in 1978, has "excellent" natural conditions, including an 80-metre lining of natural clay.
Green Lane is "considered a very tight landfill" in terms of leachate control, Rathbone said this week.
"There's no indication that there has been or will be any offsite movement."
The Oneida reserve is closest to the landfill at two kilometres away, while the Munsee-Delaware are 10 kilometres away, he added.
Ward 38 (Scarborough Centre) Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, chair of the city's works committee, said the landfill's liner "makes it virtually impossible" for leaks to occur.
Last January, the Oneida, with support from the Munsee-Delaware and the Chippewas of the Thames, launched a court action to block the landfill sale, saying both the city and province "failed to adequately consult with and accommodate the interests" of the First Nations communities on Green Lane's sale and operation.
The Oneida cancelled their court action and the purchase was completed after the Oneida and Chippewa signed a community benefit agreement with the city last March.
Chief Waddilove, however, came to Toronto to deliver in person his refusal to sign.
In the letter, he said unlike the Oneida, the Munsee-Delaware had not negotiated directly with the city. The city's assumption the Oneida could speak for his community is "preposterous," Waddlove said.
"The 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude of the city" in refusing to negotiate a separate agreement with the Munsee-Delawares is "insulting," he added.
The city's agreement will give local First Nations communities four per cent of Green Lane's gross revenue during life of the landfill, which should last to around 2030. That was $10 million from just April to December of 2007, Rathbone said.
The majority of city waste is being trucked to Michigan but after 2010 those arrangements will end and Green Lane revenue will significantly increase, he added.
The city has told the Munsee-Delaware First Nation community it can sign the benefit agreement until April 2009.
Waddilove's letter suggests the Munsee-Delawares want to divert some waste from the landfill so the community can generate energy from waste on its land, but were told by the city all matters involving Green Lane must go through a competitive bidding process.
