Clarington repaving project halted after residents find 'all kinds of crap' in material for new road bed
CBC
Durham Region has halted work on a road rebuilding project after neighbours complained they stumbled upon contaminated waste in the new road bed.
Work was shut down on the rehab project in Clarington, 100 kilometres east of Toronto, about two weeks ago. A consultant was called in to check what crews had been using in a lower layer of the rebuilt road.
"I was picking up syringes, batteries, pieces of metal, razor blades," local farmer Andrew McVey said this week.
"There's all kinds of crap ... various garbage that I felt should not be part of what's being buried in the road "
Durham Region unveiled a pilot project last spring that aimed to use recycled glass and plastic fibres from blue boxes as an experimental bed during the repair of a three-kilometre stretch of Regional Road 18, also known as Newtonville Road.
But shortly after the more than 400 tonnes of recyclables were deposited at the site, neighbours complained about a bad smell. On Sept. 19, McVey and several others took their complaints to Clarington's municipal council. They also went to Ontario Environment MInister Dave Piccini, whose riding includes Newtownville Road.
The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) launched an investigation and ordered Durham to look into the complaints. A few days later, the region suspended the project. It's remained mostly idle ever since.
McVey said he worries about how run-off from the foreign material in the recyclables could affect the well water that he and his neighbours use.
"We drink that water and our kids drink that water," McVey said. "I wasn't too happy about it at all."
John Presta, Durham Region's public works commissioner, said he and his staff are taking the complaints "very seriously."
He said the region has brought in an independent consultant to collect samples of the new bed and analyze the contents for dangerous contaminants. That happened last week, Presta said, and a report is expected within the next two weeks or so.
But he also pointed out that when material from residential blue boxes is being used, some contamination is inevitable.
"It's not a 100 per cent clean system," he said.
Durham's blue box materials were transferred to a private recycling facility in Puslinch, near Guelph, called NexCycle. The company processed the glass and some plastics into fragments and fibres.
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