Emerald’s massive incinerator expansion plans in Brampton would compromise Peel’s pollution reduction targets; Parrish raises concerns about Mississauga air quality

Amisha Moorjani recalls her mornings growing up in India and the noxious smells of plastic and rubber. The acrid chemicals would release in her nose, entering her body from the surrounding air filled with an unpleasant mix of petroleum byproducts used to make the everyday plastics and papers residents burned to cook their meals and light their shelters.

It was one of the reasons she left. Now, Moorjani fears her mornings here in Peel will once again be filled by the byproducts of hydrocarbons and other chemicals sent into the atmosphere from the burning of refuse.

The small business owner and board member with the Brampton Environmental Alliance recently pleaded with Brampton councillors to reject a proposed expansion of the Emerald incinerator, one of the largest of its kind in Canada. The massive expansion would make it the largest. 

Moorjani wants to prevent the spread of hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls and other chemical compounds that can be sent into the air from the incineration of municipal waste. 

On Thursday, she made her case before Peel Regional council, demanding that elected officials advocate on behalf of residents’ health and safety to prevent the proposed project, which would create one of the biggest incineration facilities in North America — capable of burning 912,000 tonnes of waste annually, according to a report prepared in October by the Toronto Environmental Alliance and Environmental Defence Canada. 

All the incinerators in Canada currently burn approximately 850,000 tonnes of waste each year.

“Lessons we learned from last year's wildfires were so easily and quickly forgotten when we had smoke blowing in from Northern Ontario fires,” she said, exhorting councillors to imagine that kind of persistent air quality. “We did not have any control over which way the wind blew, but we do have control over what is happening right now, and it is no longer a backyard where it is tucked away, out of sight. This facility is right in the heart of Brampton.”

Moorjani’s concerns were triggered by the proposal from Emerald Energy From Waste Inc., which recently asked the PC government to approve a plan to more than quadruple the incinerator’s capacity — from being permitted to burn 182,000 tonnes of mixed waste annually to over 900,000.

Karen Wirsig, project manager of plastics with Environmental Defence Canada, underscored in front of regional councillors how more than a dozen environmental groups, along with hundreds of Peel residents, have asked the PC government to refuse the application for the expansion. Environmental Defence has also requested that prior to considering the expansion, the Ministry of Environment require a full environmental assessment of the proposal to allow for additional public and expert input.  

The Brampton facility sits along the border with Mississauga, where staff and council members worry about the potential impact on local air quality.

In a statement to The Pointer, Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish stressed that she has concerns, particularly in Malton where the air quality is already degraded by local industries.

“Malton has the second highest air pollution readings in southern Ontario because of the massive trucking associated with the airport and massive belt of manufacturing that surrounds it.”

Parrish, who was elected Mayor in June, previously represented Malton as the Ward councillor, and was well known for her fierce advocacy on behalf of the area and its residents, who routinely raise concerns about being isolated from the rest of the city in a much more heavily industrialized part of Mississauga north of the airport. 

The Emerald incinerator is embedded in this industrial mix, but residential subdivisions also share the immediate surroundings where background concentrations of other pollutants already run high due to major highway corridors — causing air pollution levels that are as much as double normal concentrations — heavy logistics/commercial trucking and other industrial operations in the area. Within a 10-kilometre radius sits the Emerald incinerator, a medical waste facility, gas plant and dozens of other heavy industrial buildings. The incinerator is just over a kilometre from Pearson International Airport, within walking distance to places of worship and about 500 metres from residential subdivisions in Brampton and Mississauga.

“Pollution of any kind is a concern for the City of Mississauga,” a spokesperson told The Pointer. “We remain committed to taking action that improves air quality and protects our residents from pollution, regardless of the source.” Staff plan to find out more about the expansion when a report is brought back to Brampton council. 

“We have not been directly involved in discussions about the Emerald Incinerator, so we don’t have the information to comment on it,” the spokesperson said. “Every tonne of greenhouse gas that is emitted has the same effect, no matter where it comes from, so we know that any increase in GHG emissions from any location contributes to the global climate problem.”

The Emerald incinerator is located along the border of Brampton and Mississauga in a heavy industrial area that surrounds Pearson International Airport.

(Screenshot/GoogleMaps)

Emerald estimates through its own reporting that the redevelopment and expansion of the Brampton facility will cause the release of 900,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, which is approximately nine percent of Peel’s overall emissions. Approximately 40 percent of the waste it receives is from biogenic sources (organics, wood and paper) and another large portion is plastics. 

Moorjani pointed out on Thursday that the Government of Canada advises in order to minimize the risk of exposure to dioxins and furans — toxic chemicals that are identified through air quality studies — Heath Canada’s Toxic Substances Division says, “do not burn garbage, especially construction materials that might contain wood preservatives or plastic.”

With the province increasingly challenged to find landfill space — current estimates suggest existing operations will reach capacity in nine years, if not sooner — Emerald is proposing the incinerator expansion as a solution to the growing waste problem; though incineration does not eliminate the need for landfills. 

The Pointer recently reported the Region of Peel had cancelled its previous contract with Emerald, but a spokesperson confirmed Friday that while Peel withdrew from building the facility in 2012 due to the costs, and that the municipality disposes most of its garbage by landfill, the Region does have an ongoing agreement with Emerald Energy to send up to 20,000 tonnes per year of waste “on an as-needed basis.”

An environmental study review produced by Emerald determined that more than one-third of the total weight of the material burned after incineration still exists as ash which is then transferred to landfills. This increases the amount of pollutants released as toxins not only enter the atmosphere in the air through incineration, but also through landfills where pollutants can make their way into the soil and waterways. 

“Peel youth already face so many barriers to being healthy and successful breathing the air should not be one of them,” Julian Russell, a bioresource engineer and member of Brampton Environmental Alliance Youth Council, told regional councillors Thursday. “The cancerous dioxins and furans released into the body of this incinerator, as my colleague mentioned, are fat soluble, which means that once they're in your body, they stay there for the rest of your life.” 

“Nearly 40 percent of the population of Peel is under the age of 29. Do nearly half of these community members deserve to spend the bulk of their lives breathing in these cancerous gasses?”

Russell, alongside Steven Kirby with Sierra Peel Executive Committee, requested that the Region send a letter to Andrea Khanjin, Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) — who will have to approve Emerald’s streamlined assessment — asking for an independent environmental assessment of the project. Under provincial legislation, the incinerator expansion proposal is only required to undergo a streamlined assessment that is completed by Emerald itself.  They also asked that council direct Peel Public Health to obtain further data on the community and health impacts of the current incinerator, as well as those from the expansion, and that staff report back to council on the Minister’s decision with next steps based on the EA decision.

The Region of Peel currently has greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets of 45 percent below the 2010 baseline by 2030 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, specifically targeting private-sector emissions. Through the Climate Change Master Plan, the Region’s spokesperson said Peel is committed “to support and enable the achievement of community GHG emissions reduction targets” set by the local municipalities in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga.  

The spokesperson added, “Based on the Regional staff review of information provided in the Emerald Environmental Screening Report, this project would not achieve overall GHG emissions reductions tied to waste incineration processes and thus does not align with commitments to support the climate action needed to achieve community GHG emissions reduction targets.”

“Waste incineration works against the goal to end plastic waste and pollution and to reduce waste overall,” Wirsig told council on Thursday. “Instead, incineration facilities require constant sources of waste over many years to justify their existence and amortize their cost.”

“Worse, they expose nearby residents to dangerous air pollution that affects their health and quality of life.”

Along with incinerators, highways and dense industrial spaces contribute to poor air quality, exposing residents to concerning levels of air pollution.

(Flickr) 

A 2019 article from Environmental Defence detailed how burning plastic waste through incineration is not a sustainable solution to end plastic pollution. Disposing of debris through incineration contributes to spewing harmful chemicals into the air. “Plastics in particular, when burned, release pollutants such as dioxins and heavy metals. These air pollutants pose a health risk to communities located near plastic waste incinerators.” It added that with 99 percent of plastics made from fossil fuels, burning plastics is as unsustainable as burning any other fossil fuel and incineration ultimately encourages more plastic production to replace the plastic that is burned.

Environmental Defence and other advocacy groups, Wirsig explained to council, are concerned about Brampton and Peel’s airshed which is already heavily degraded by significant pollution. Burning more waste, she warned, will only make the current air quality worse. She highlighted how lobbyists are working to convince municipalities across the province that incineration is the answer to their garbage problems. Simcoe County and York Region, she pointed out, have been told to send their garbage to Brampton to be burned at Emerald.

“It is totally unjust for the current and future residents of Peel to be forced to breathe the garbage shipped from other communities, municipalities who have not done the necessary work of reducing the waste they generate for disposal and instead simply choosing to make it someone else’s problem,” Wirsig said. Waste reduction, as opposed to burning, is the real answer, she added. 

The environmental study review conducted by Emerald shows the background concentration for dioxins and furans already accounts for nearly 84 percent of the Ontario Ambient Air Quality Criteria. It revealed that by phase-three of the proposed expansion, the surrounding air quality would surpass safety levels in Ontario. 

The Region of Peel has requested that Emerald ensure their air quality testing is completed at maximum capacity, during start-ups, after shutdowns and during regular operations of the incinerator, not at times when readings would possibly be much lower.

“At the very least, we need to have a fulsome review with independent scientific input and more public consultation,” Wirsig implored. “A full environmental assessment could provide the opportunity to examine alternatives to the proposal, including waste reduction strategies.”

The Region’s spokesperson told The Pointer in an email that in order to complete Peel’s assessment of the potential health implications associated with the proposed expansion, Peel Public Health is waiting on the consulting firm hired by Emerald to prepare its studies to address Public Health’s comments and questions on air quality and other health implications. The spokesperson said when assessing the health impacts of air quality from any source, staff “consider multiple factors such as the pollutant, the impacted population, the dispersion (movement of the pollutants especially how they may impact sensitive populations) and the environmental fate of the pollutant (what happens to the pollutant and where it ends up, once released into the environment).” 

Acknowledging the delegates’ concerns on Thursday, Parrish responded, “There are a lot of other elements going into the environment that cause pollution, but what we don't want to do is add an extra one. We've got all kinds of stuff happening in the Region of Peel that are polluting our air, and why would we add something that's going to add more toxins to it?”

She continued. “So, whatever it takes to get a report back from staff to the best of their ability on what they recommend, and then if we're not satisfied with that, and or in conjunction with that, we ask the Ministry to do a detailed study.” 

Council approved a motion, presented by Brampton Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor and seconded by Parrish, to refer Thursday’s delegations to Peel Public Health staff to report back to regional council on the impacts of Emerald’s proposed expansion. 

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Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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