The Fraser Valley Regional District is blasting Metro Vancouver in the case of tonnes of toxic ash being shipped from an Burnaby incinerator.
Chilliwack mayor and FVRD chair Sharon Gaetz says people should be very alarmed at how the hazardous material is being treated.
Gaetz says the behaviours of both the Burnaby incinerator operator, Covanta, and Metro Vancouver are highly suspect, especially Metro with its “reactive communications strategy.”
“This is 1800 tonnes of toxic waste that have been treated cavalierly, in my point of view ,from Metro who have said they will talk about it if the media approaches them about, really? I can imagine what would have happened in an oil spill if people would have treated it this cavalierly.”
Gaetz wonders why Covanta and or Metro Vancouver left it to the operators of the Cache Creek landfill to sound the alarm over tonnes of toxic ash.
“The authorities didn’t have systems in place to make sure that the testing was being successfully conducted to make sure that everyone was safe and that our health was being looked after. This is a private company Wastech who discovered it, if they had not done that Metro Vancouver, the Ministry of Environment, and the public wouldn’t have known about it.”
Gaetz says people should pay attention to the toxic ash story to see the facts about garbage incineration and the potential impact on the environment.
“And people need to be alarmed we just kind of trust if you burn something it magically disappears, it doesn’t magically disappear and when it is treated with such levity it should really put fear into people.”
Tests at the Cache Creek landfill have determined some of the roughly 2000 tonnes of hazardous material is toxic even though Covanta in an email says it isn’t.
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