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DIRT PLAN DIES
by Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight, March 28, 2002
A Richmond landfill owner announced that he will not accept 8,600 tonnes of U.S. contaminated soil after meeting with environmentalist David Cadman. Stuart Somerville, president of Ecowaste Industries Ltd., told the Straight that he had a two-hour meeting on March 22 with Cadman, the president of the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation.
“I think we understood each other quite well after that,” Somerville said. “I don’t think we backed down. I think we took the high road.”
On March 25, Ecowaste and Hazco Environmental Services Ltd . informed Richmond city officials that they would not proceed with a plan to bring contaminated soil from the Time Oil Company site in downtown Portland. Last February, Hazco vice-president Gregory Campbell told the Straight that the soil’s primary contaminant is pentachlorophenol, which contains dioxins.
On March 26, Somerville told the Straight he was “very confident” that the contaminated soil would have posed “no unacceptable environmental risk” to Richmond residents. Hazco had obtained permits from the provincial, federal, and U.S. federal governments to import soil with dioxins, which have been labelled as a carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• CHARLIE SMITH
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