When your community becomes a toxic waste dump

It’s expensive to follow complex disposal protocols for construction waste that often contains toxins. It’s much less expensive to find someone willing or desperate enough to simply allow waste to be dumped directly onto their land, with no regard for the health and environmental impacts.

An Indigenous community in Kanesatake has dealt with this problem for years. Until some community members banded together, at personal risk, to get the story out there and force the government to take action. This week, the government finally did.

Chris Curtis is an investigative journalist and co-founder of The Rover. 

“It’s a surprisingly forceful response given how lax the government has been for so many years. But as an officer on site told me, that is what happens when the media gets together and puts pressure on the government,” said Curtis. 

Nexus, a company named by reporters covering this story, has denied its role in a comment to La Presse.

The company says it is only responsible for the soil transportation component and assures that it “has not at any time dumped soil into the Ottawa River.” It assures that it “maintains a buffer strip between the natural environments and the deposit site” and reiterates that its “commitment to environmental protection remains unwavering.”

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