Dear Editor:
The discussion about a proposed regional compost facility in Summerland has been unusual.
The provincial guidelines for landfills is reasonably clear. The province states that “landfills should be carefully designed and managed to minimize risks to the public health and safety and to ensure environmental protection.” Yet much of this discussion has been about odour control.
Perhaps, for the first time, public health should be discussed.
The Summerland landfill is the closest landfill to a water supply in the province.
The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen is apparently unaware of the fact that the vast majority of the Summerland landfill is unlined, unprotected.
Also the RDOS is unaware that chemical leachate has been detected close to our main water reservoir.
What ‘protects’ the water reservoir from chemical contaminants is the so-called mounding effect. This mounding effect is not permanent or guaranteed.
When Summerland engineer Myles Parson’s examined the area in 1995, he stated, “its not if contaminants will enter the water system, its when this will happen.”
He recommended that Summerland minimize the addition of other water sources at the landfill, to reduce contaminant migration. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened.
When the water treatment plant was built in 2008, the engineers grossly underestimated the size of the infiltration ponds (“by one order of magnitude”) and now massive volumes of water are deposited at the landfill. The proposed regional compost facility would add even more water.
If chemical contaminants entered the water system, the use of activated charcoal may be of some assistance. (“boil water advisories” are used for biological contaminants, but not chemical contaminants).
The water system would be shut down.
The proposed compost facility does not “minimize risks to the public health and safety and to ensure environmental protection.”
There is an abundance of facts to state that such a proposal would in fact, increase risks to public health.
David E. Gregory
Summerland