Toronto Needs To Find New Home For Sewage Sludge

Toronto has a sticky, stinky mess on its hands – and only two months to come up with a solution.

The Michigan landfill site that accepts this city’s garbage has turned its nose up at a particularly malodorous portion of its refuse – sewage sludge. Residents who live near the dumping grounds complained the smell was unbearable, and now the Carleton Farms facility located 50 km west of Detroit has said it won’t accept Hogtown’s wet waste as of August 1st.

“We came to a business decision not to accept sludge at the landfill,” explained facility spokesperson Will Flower, adding that the move wasn’t connected to a proposed state ban on the rest of Toronto’s trash. About 95 rubbish-filled trucks cross the border from Canada’s largest city daily.

“Until our customers can come up with ways to make their sludge less odorous and more manageable as landfill, we made the decision to forgo revenue and instead listen to our neighbours who were concerned with the acceptance of sludge.”

Carleton Farms will continue to accept 700,000 tonnes of Toronto garbage annually, just not the treated sewage. Toronto works committee Shelley Carrol only learned of the decision Wednesday.

“If they’ve got a hard date, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t got it,” she said.

Now her staff is checking with the province’s Environment Ministry to see if the decision is legally binding. If it is, Carrol’s confident the city will find somewhere else to get rid of its sludge.

Canada contends that efforts to restrict foreign garbage contravenes the North American Free Trade Agreement.

However, plans are already in place to divert waste from the U.S. state by 2010.

“Getting out of Michigan, even with bio-solids, was the plan,” Carrol said. “This means we have to do so sooner than we expected.”