As a newspaper editor, I don’t like to be hoodwinked. On May 29, four councillors held a press conference in regard to information on the public-private partnership project to deliver an anaerobic waste digester to Chatham.
The digester is to utilize waste from Greenfield Global and Chatham wastewater to create renewable natural gas, from which Greenfield and the municipality would profit.
The digester project was agreed upon April 27 by council in a 14-4 vote. The four naysayers – Amy Finn, Michael Bondy, Alysson Storey and Rhonda Jubenville – wanted more public consultation on the matter at the time.
And a month later, here they were holding a press conference across the road from Greenfield. They said there was a discrepancy in the numbers between what council agreed to and what appeared on the Environmental Registry of Ontario’s (ERO) website.
That much we agree on.
It was pointed out to them that on the ERO website, the project appeared to be more than 2.4 times larger than what council had agreed upon.
According to the ERO, “The facility will be designed to receive and process an average of 802,464 metric tonnes, up to a maximum of 900,000 tonnes of waste per year.”
The only “facility” mentioned on the ERO listing is for “an anaerobic digestion processing facility” – the waste digester. It does not say in the ERO posting that only 370,000 metric tonnes will go through the digester a year, which is the figure council had approved.
However, Darren Galbraith, head of the PUC, said council has always known that there would be some added materials and wastewater coming from Greenfield Global to the Chatham wastewater treatment plant.
“I don’t think we ever talked to council directly about the tonnage of the wastewater coming from Greenfield Global to the wastewater treatment plant. They knew there was some,” he told The Chatham Voice.
Storey, one of the Naysaying Four, said at the press conference they did not receive information from administration to clear up the matter.
“We’re hoping for some additional information to clarify the discrepancy,” Storey said May 29. “But we haven’t had that yet. We really need the public to be aware what was approved by council April 27 is not what’s being applied to with the province.”
However, The Voice received a copy of an email that was circulated to council and top C-K admin mere hours after the end of the May 25 council meeting where the digester matter resurfaced.
That email, corroborated by another anonymous source on council, explained things.
“I understand there was still confusion on the sizing of the AD (anaerobic digester). It is approximately 370,000 tonnes per year (TPY) as reported in the April 27 report to council,” Quinton wrote in his email, dated on May 26 and timestamped at 12:16 a.m., three days before the press conference. “The ERO submission was for 900,000 TPY, accounting for the 450,000 TPY of low-strength wastewater from the Greenfield Global ethanol distillery flowing to the backend of the AD site for treatment before disposal to the Chatham-Kent sewer system. The AD is sized for 370,000 TPY with room for future expansion of up to 450,000 TPY. So total potential flowing in from all directions is 900,000 TPY.”
That’s pretty straightforward in our eyes.
There was no change in the size and scope of the project. And this was explained days prior to the Naysayer Four’s press event.
The ERO did not distinguish between the two numbers, true. It appears the councillors holding their little spotlight event chose to focus on that fact, rather than the information supplied by Quinton three days earlier.
How did that info wind up on the ERO’s site? The Ministry of Environment, Parks and Conservation (MECP) opted to place the matter there after receiving a 600-page report from Greenfield’s consultant.
So, these councillors had this information and yet they went and told the public they did not.
Did they not check their email from municipal staff for three days or did they choose to ignore it?
As a councillor, it is your responsibility to seek out the information you think you need. Read your damned emails.
They call election time “silly season” for a reason. But this is not the standard we expect from our elected officials.
At best this is just being irresponsible. At worst, this was a blatant attempt to manipulate the facts.
This is not internet gossip. They used the media to attempt to spread disinformation.
It doesn’t meet the standards of acceptable conduct from our elected officials.
This smacks of dishonesty. It calls into doubt everything they’ve been saying and everything they’re going to say.
