By Pepper Parr
April 11, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
Was it the cold winter that resulted in hundreds of dead fish floating on the pond of the Appleby Line property that is surrounded on three sides by the Air Park land fill or is the death of the fish the result of toxic and silt filled water now in the pond?
The argument as to whether the land fill was going to do any real damage has been simmering in the background. Some testing was done but the
A spring fed pond with hundreds of fish – normally. Today wasn’t a normal day on the Appleby Line property. Hundreds of dead fish were floating n the water this morning.
Ministry of the Environment got involved in a struggle over who was entitled to the information from their testing results – privacy issues came into play and the privacy officers at every level of government seem to be taking the time they feel they needed to determine just who can see what.
The spring fed pond is yards away from a mountain of landfill that was never properly tested when it was dumped on the property. Runoff from the landfill is now getting to the water table – dead fish are showing up in the pond.
Some of the evidence may have come to the surface – literally, for one resident. Hundreds of dead fish were found floating on her pond this morning. That pond is yards away from a 30 foot high pile of landfill that is in place in violation of the city’s site alteration bylaw.
The property owner advises that the Ministry of the Environment will be on her property later today to test for contamination in the pond.
That crane sits atop a 30 foot high wall of landfill that is yards away from a pond that had hundreds of dead fish floating on it this morning.
No one will be surprised if it is contaminated – they fully expected this to happen. It is the result of thousands of tonnes of untested landfill being dumped without the required permissions.
Everyone will feel badly for the property owners – but no one is going to fix the underground water course that may be damaged for decades.
A win of the appeal of the court case in which the city won its case – their bylaw is valid and the air park is bound by that rule – isn’t going to bring the dead fish in that pond back to life.
There is more damage to come as well. Individual livelihoods are being damaged here. What is this going to do to our best small city to live in reputation?
If this is the “canary in the coal mine” it may be a catastrophic mistake for the MOE to chose to withhold information. Hopefully Tatiana’s scenario holds true and there is no contamination. Albiet I will be surprised if it’s the end of the story.
MY understanding is that the owner of the land, can request privacy, but the MOE has the final say. In this case, they have agreed to protect the owner. RED FLAG.
I also understand that the owner could be personally charged and jailed for willfully placing contaminants on his land. There is no hiding behind a corporation in this matter.
It’s reasonable to presume that if there were no contaminants, the owner wouldn’t have requested his ‘privacy’. In fact, he’d be gleefully throwing that information into the faces of all those who want him tarred and feathered.
Ummm those are goldfish… They don’t winter well at the best of times nevermind the kind if cold we saw this past season. I don’t know many fish that would survive especially not encased in ice.
Do I understand correctly that the MOE is in effect putting a “gag” on the results of soil testing?
Editor’s note” Not exactly a “gag”. The information they are holding back relates to the property of a person and that person has privacy rights. What makes this sticky is that the owner of the property is believed to be the owner of the Air Park – the guy that put the landfill on the property.