BY MIKE SIMMS
Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez was away in Toronto and in true form, without the driver, the bus broke down, literally, as city councillors headed out on their first road trip to outlying communities.
This was the first of a series of council priorities meetings set to take place in the outlying Wards in response to Floyd Laughren’s Constellation Report, released last fall. Wednesday’s meeting took place in Onaping Falls (Ward 3) and there are dozens more of these meetings slated for this year.
However, just outside of Azilda, the city bus that was transporting the councillors broke down after the radiator hose popped off, spewing out radiator fluid. This resulted in a 30-minute delay and another bus was ordered to rescue the stranded councillors.
Once the new bus arrived, the councillors happily continued on their way to the Onaping Falls meeting.
Before going to the meeting, the local politicians trudged through the muck and mud in the damp caverns of the NORCAT Underground Centre in Onaping. The tour lasted about 20 minutes and displayed the inner workings of NORCAT. The training facility is a working mine with 96 students training for four weeks at a time.
At the end of the tour, the miners set off a blast inside the shaft once everyone had cleared the mine.
The biggest blast of the day didn’t come from explosives, but instead from Onaping and Levack residents at the meeting.
The major sticking point of the meeting, held at the Onaping Community Centre, was the dumping of garbage in the forests around Onaping Falls. Area residents, led by Dick Plaus, accused the city of forcing them to pollute in response to tipping fees at the landfill in Azilda.
He laid the case for re-opening the Onaping Falls landfill, whih closed down years ago due to Ministry of Environment certification requirements not being met. He also recommended the tipping fees be lifted for citizens because the community’s portion only accounted for three percent of the 350,000 the city makes off the fees annually. The rest of the money comes from commercial garbage dump users.
“We’re never going to get a ‘greater’ city unless we do this,” Plaus said.
“We’re not second-class citizens, we’re first-class,” he added.
It would be cheaper to re-open the old landfill than to clean all the rubbish dumped in the bush over the years, Plaus said.
“Give the people a convenient place to dump their garbage.”
Plaus told the story of how one young area resident decided to dump his garbage in the bush because it cost too much to go all the way to Azilda to dump the garbage. You can’t blame him, Plaus added.
“I really think we can blame them,” Barbeau shot back later. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and that’s part of the problem.
“It’s irresponsible.”
Plaus agreed, but said if you dangle a carrot in front of someone, sometimes it’s enough to entice them to pollute. Waste transfer stations were suggested as a temporary solution. The stations would house resident’s garbage in large container bins until delivery to a landfill would be possible.
“Anything you can do to stop it is better than nothing,” Plaus said. “It’s terrible.”
A motion to generate a report on the garbage problem was passed once debate ended.
“I see it not as an Onaping issue,” said Ward 1 councillor Joe Cimino. “I see it as a Greater Sudbury problem.
“It’s a problem in every ward. There’s garbage everywhere and this is a negative image for our city. We need to eliminate the fees and the transfer stations are a solution.”
Later in the evening meeting, the Levack and Onaping water supply was in question. For years the towns got their water from CVRD INCO and Xstrata's sources. INCO notified the city in 2003 they didn't want to supply water anymore in the face of new regulations that were implemented in the wake of Walkerton.
Greg Clausen, the acting general manager of infrastructure, said the city is in the process of finding new water sources for the Onaping Falls and Levack communities.
A new $10 million facility is in the works and if approved, would be commissioned Sept. 1, 2008, if all goes according to plan. This deadline is three months before the CVRD Inco cut-off date. Construction would begin in the fall of 2007.
A new public information session is planned for May 2007 to discuss any concern by the residents.
Full story in Friday's edition of Northern Life's newspaper
