Northern communities bank on waste industry.

• Author: Krejlgaard, Chris

Northern communities bank on waste industry

Several Northern Ontario communities are attempting to break the economic hold of resource-based industries by attracting industries based on a more plentiful commodity - waste.

Plans for storage sites in Geraldton, Hornepayne and Elk Lake for low-level radioactive material from the Port Hope area are under consideration, while Kirkland Lake, Kapuskasing and Ignace are proposing facilities to process and dispose of solid waste from the Toronto area and a medical waste facility is being planned for Carling Township near Parry Sound.

Officials of these communities are overlooking the inherent stigma of waste in an attempt to take advantage of the emergence of waste management and disposal as a growth industry.

"Cleaning up the Great Lakes will take $100 billion and cleaning up leaky dumps will cost $40 billion," said Don Chant, president and chairman of the Ontario Waste Management Corporation. "There are many new opportunities in pollution abatement, waste disposal and waste monitoring for people ready and willing to take advantage of them."

The co-founder of Pollution Probe, an environmental organization which works with business to solve the environmental problems facing Canada, addressed the Sudbury and District Chamber of Commerce early last month in an effort to inform businessmen of the abundance of business opportunities in the environmental sector.

He said the opportunity to dispose of southern Ontario waste, primarily solid waste, is the result of prevailing moods in the province's southern climes.

"There are two attitudes invoived and neither of them is very good," Chant said. "The first is that everyone wants someone else to solve their problems and the second is that Northern Ontario sees an economic opportunity to take the waste."

Most of the sites have been proposed for municipalities which have been dealth severe economic blows, whether by global market conditions for resource commodities or by corporate decisions made by major employers.

17-YEAR RECESSION

"The town has been in a recession for 17 years, ever since the (Bear Island) land caution," said Delores Benn of Elk Lake. "It comes to a point where something will have to be done."

Benn, who is chairman of the Citizen's Liaison Group (CLG) examining the federal government's proposal for locating a low-level radioactive site in the area, said the caution - which halted local mining exploration activity - as well as other economic hardships have all but killed the community.

"In 1909 Elk Lake's population was between 1,500 and 2,000. Now there are only about 500," she noted.

Atomic Energy of Canada (AEC) has spent several months scouting locations for a specially designed permanent storage site. More than 800 communities in the province were initially contacted by the federal agency about a year ago. Only seven towns remain in the siting process.

COMPENSATIONS

Laura Evans, a public relations consultant with the federal agency, said the price tag for the storage site - which could encompass...