Waste not, burn not: Brampton's battle over massive waste incineration expansion

Brampton is facing growing concern over a controversial proposal to expand a 30-year-old waste incinerator—one that could “allow a dangerous spike of cancer-causing chemicals into the air and soil in the Greater Toronto Area” for more than 25 years.

Owners of the privately-owned facility plan to more than quadruple its capacity for burning waste from households and businesses.

“It's not fair for the community in Brampton to become the garbage capital of Canada,” Environmental Defence’s senior program manager for plastics, Karen Wirsig, told The Pointer.

 A pungent smell of waste engulfs the area around the incinerator.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

In 2023, Environmental Defence learned of plans at the Emerald Energy From Waste facility in Bramalea, within the eastern part of Brampton, and discovered that even before completing an environmental assessment, the PC government had pledged $2.99 million to fund experiments on hydrogen production through garbage burning.

The company was going through a new streamlined provincial Environmental Assessment process.

Emerald claimed the waste-burning facility will produce clean energy, but such assertions have been debunked, as garbage is not a renewable source and its byproducts are not clean. Incinerators emit more greenhouse gases and toxic pollution than fossil gas per unit of electricity. The facility’s hydrogen production from plastic is a carbon-intensive, fossil fuel-powered process that consumes more energy than it generates and cannot be considered "green hydrogen" which is typically made from renewable sources like solar or wind.

“Generating more energy from garbage in Ontario will make our electricity grid dirtier than it is today,” a statement from Environmental Defence clarified.

Since then, 14 environmental advocates, health professionals and community stakeholders—including Environmental Defence—raised red flags about the proposal. On April 1, 2024, they wrote to the provincial government led by Doug Ford, expressing deep concern about the risks of the incinerator expansion and its impact on Brampton’s already poor air quality, exacerbated by the PCs’ ineffective pollution policies.

In 2023, Brampton, the second largest city in the region at the time, was also the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Peel, with buildings and transportation accounting for over 83 percent of the city’s total emissions.

With just five years left for Brampton to meet its goal of reducing emissions by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 (part of a larger 80 percent reduction by 2050), the city's increasing population, coupled with a funding gap and the absence of supportive provincial policies, reflect a stark reality of environmental racism.

Now Canada’s third-largest city, Brampton recently surpassed Mississauga with a population of 791,486—an increase of nearly 100,000 residents since 2020, according to the latest Statistics Canada census. This surge in population has amplified concerns about inadequate per capita funding for essential services such as transit, healthcare, and infrastructure.

In a special council meeting held in January, councillors voiced frustration over Brampton’s chronic underfunding by provincial and federal governments—a sentiment echoed by Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish.

Council members in Brampton have for decades lobbied to get fair-share funding from the provincial and federal governments, with the city’s population now even slightly larger than Mississauga's. 

The funding gap was evident in Brampton’s latest budget, where millions of dollars were cut from environmental initiatives despite the city declaring a climate emergency in 2019.

This was largely a failure of Mayor Patrick Brown, who has prioritized excessive funding for policing in Peel and demanded his city’s budget be kept frozen for his first three years in office, creating glaring shortfalls in critical areas including climate change mitigation.

As one of Canada’s largest cities, Brampton’s battle for clean air continues as the proposal for the waste incinerator expansion looms. 

Experts fear the people most likely to be affected by this increased pollution load – residents and workers in Bramalea, northeast Mississauga and northwest Toronto – are more likely to be racialized and have lower household incomes than the GTA and the province as a whole. 

“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?” Julian Russell, a bioresource engineer and member of Brampton Environmental Alliance Youth Council, had asked regional councillors in a July meeting.

The largest income group in Brampton are the 16.92 percent of residents who earn between $20,000 and $29,000.

(World Population Review)

“Environmental racism and injustice are characterized by the over-burdening of communities like these with polluting facilities,” Environmental Defence experts noted, reacting to the first Environmental Screening Report, which was released in January 2024, for the incinerator. Approximately 80 percent of Brampton’s residents identify as a visible minority, and critics have questioned if provincial governments would behave the same way if the city’s demographics looked more like communities in rural Ontario. 

The Emerald Incinerator where the red pin is, right next to the 407 Highway, commercial businesses and near residential subdivisions.

(Google Satellite)

The Emerald incinerator sits in the midst of an industrial zone, with commercial businesses immediately around it and residential subdivisions within a kilometre. The site is just over a kilometre from Pearson International Airport and within a 10-kilometre radius that includes several other heavily industrialized sites, including a medical waste facility and a gas plant.

“The proposed Brampton incinerator expansion is a ticking time bomb for the community,” Dr. Sehjal Bhargava, Family Doctor and Co-Chair of the Ontario Regional Committee of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment warns.

If approved, the facility would increase its capacity from 182,000 tonnes of waste annually to 900,000 tonnes—equivalent to one-third of Ontario’s municipal waste, and approximately nine percent of Peel’s overall emissions. 

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

Being aware of this, Queen’s Park may soon “rubber stamp” the second Environmental Screening Report completed by Emerald Energy From Waste.

Environmental Defence, the Brampton Environmental Alliance (BEA), the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), and many other groups are urging the province to halt the expansion and review its policy on permitting polluting facilities.

“Incineration produces dangerous pollutants that are not well controlled under existing regulation in Ontario. Pushing ahead with a quadrupling of capacity at the Brampton incinerator is a recipe for disaster and an environmental injustice,” Wirsig noted.

Environmental Defence warns that pollutants such as mercury, dioxins and furans, cadmium, and lead that are emitted from the incinerator, settle in land and water, persisting indefinitely without breaking down. These toxic substances accumulate in food chains and the human body, with over 90 percent of dioxin and furan exposure coming from contaminated food.

“Emerald only considered the inhalation pathway. It has no assessment of dioxin and furan, mercury or other heavy metals loading in food webs or flora in the area, including fish or eggs harvested in the vicinity of the facility,” a statement by Environmental Defence notes.

Emerald contends that expanding its incinerator is a solution to the growing waste issue as landfill space is expected to reach capacity in nine years.

However, the facility’s own environmental study revealed that over one-third of the material burned turns into ash, which is sent to landfills, releasing toxins into the air and contaminating soil and waterways.

The facility’s Environmental Screening Report (ESR) highlights that the area surrounding the incinerator is already burdened with significant air pollution, including elevated levels of hydrochloric acid and benzo(a)pyrene (B(a)P)—a probable human carcinogen—which exceeds provincial air quality criteria and will worsen with climate change.

“The modelled concentrations for nitrogen dioxides, which are harmful to respiratory health, and highly toxic dioxins and furans, would also exceed air quality criteria when phase 2 and 3 of the expansion are complete.”

According to the World Health Organization global air quality guidelines, Long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide in the air has been linked to an increased rate of non-accidental deaths in Canada.

(World Health Organization)

The incinerator redevelopment will also increase harmful air contaminants, including PM 2.5 and sulfur dioxide, with ultrafine particulates potentially linked to brain tumours.

In Peel region, Caledon, which is facing air pollution from the aggregate industry, is the only municipality committed to air quality protection by following the 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) standards for PM2.5 and PM10, two harmful types of particulate matter, while most of the province still follows the older 2005 WHO standard.

Environmental Defence also found the incinerator to be the primary source of mercury pollution in the neighbourhood, with mercury concentrations expected to rise more than tenfold in the first phase of the expansion compared to current levels and reach 47 times the background concentration by the time phase three is completed.

Mercury exposure poses serious health risks, including neurological damage, kidney toxicity, and developmental harm to fetuses, with varying effects depending on the form of mercury, from skin irritation to long-term cognitive and motor dysfunction.

(UNEP)

“There are no known safe levels of mercury exposure in humans,” the report warns.

Municipal waste incinerators are also well-known sources of dioxins and furans, which are unintentionally produced during the process of burning waste. 

Emerald's 2023 ambient air monitoring reveals that the background concentration of these pollutants near the incinerator is already at an unusually high level of 83.57 percent of Ontario’s Air Quality Criteria (AAQC). 

“Dioxins and furans, which are some of the most toxic substances known to science, they're produced from the burning of garbage, including plastics, and they are emitted into the air from waste incinerators. Even the state-of-the-art, most fancy waste incinerator you can imagine, dioxins and furans are a feature, that kind of pollution is a feature of all waste incineration,” Wirsig explained.

The ESR predicts that Phase 3 of the proposed expansion will exceed the AAQC for dioxins and furans with concerns of actual emissions potentially reaching higher, as the company does not test for these pollutants during non-steady conditions, such as start-up or shutdown, when emissions can spike significantly.

“Right now, they test a couple of times a year under ideal conditions to see what's coming out of the smoke stack but that's it. They're not testing, monitoring and controlling in all types of conditions. So, when you have lower temperatures because you're starting up or shutting down the incinerator, you'll have different levels of pollution, higher dioxins and furans. And we're not looking at that, we're not counting it. We're not looking at the impact of it,” Wirsig said. 

“One of the key guidelines that needs to be updated (in provincial policy) is to have continuous or long-term monitoring of key pollutants, and also during all conditions, all operating conditions, not just so-called normal ones.”

Wirsig is referring to Ontario’s Guideline A-7: Air Pollution Control, Design and Operation Guidelines for Municipal Waste Thermal.

She believes among other things, A-7 lacks requirements for:

• Continuous monitoring for particulate matter and mercury;
• Sufficient control, including study and semi-continuous monitoring of dioxin and furan emissions in flue gas and fly ash;
• Air pollution control and stack monitoring during other than normal operating conditions, including startup and shutdown;
• Publicly-available results of pollution monitoring and testing.

“Our experience with the ‘modern’ municipal waste incinerator in Durham shows there are significant toxic releases,” Wendy Bracken of Durham Environment Watch said in a statement shared with The Pointer. 

“We are learning just how often the facility experiences other-than-normal operating conditions, during which the release of toxic pollutants is unpredictable and likely to be much higher than what is indicated by the very short-term tests conducted semi-annually under ideal conditions. But Ontario policy doesn’t take into account these fluctuations and therefore discounts the actual impacts of emissions on the nearby community and environment. That’s a dangerous approach and it needs to be addressed and remedied — and urgently before the Province issues any new or amended permits.” 

In a statement shared with The Pointer, Parrish had also expressed her concerns, particularly for Malton, where the air quality has already been 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,” she said.

This is compounded by the ongoing development of Brampton’s Goreway gas plant, which produces electricity from heavily polluting sources and is set to pump out an additional 48,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.

Brampton’s Goreway Power Station, located near Highway 407, is an 875-megawatt natural gas power plant owned by Capital Power.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

In July 2024, BEA representatives had implored Brampton councillors at a council meeting to reject the proposed expansion of the Emerald incinerator, which, if expanded, would become the largest of its kind in Canada, and one of the biggest incineration facilities in North America.

Wirsig states, “There are better alternatives to burning garbage that improve public health, boost the economy, and protect the environment,” such as banning organics from landfills and incineration to ensure they are composted, regulating and enforcing high waste diversion targets for industrial, commercial, and institutional sectors, implementing deposit-return systems for non-alcoholic beverage containers, and setting targets for reusing packaging, which contributes significantly to Ontario’s waste.

Ontario’s Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario aims to divert 80 percent of waste from disposal by 2050, up from about 25 percent today. Achieving this target could bring major environmental, health, and economic benefits. However, waste diversion has stalled since the policy’s launch in 2017, and there are growing concerns over the depletion of landfill capacity in the coming decade. 

The solution isn’t to increase waste incineration. Waste-Free Ontario strategy suggests preventing waste in the first place by following the “zero waste hierarchy,” which prioritizes alternatives to incineration and waste-to-energy.

Emerald’s waste data from 2023, shared in a March 15, 2024 letter, shows that a large portion of the waste burned at the facility—up to 75 percent of household waste and 100 percent of some commercial/industrial loads—consists of organics, paper, and plastics. “These materials should be diverted to other systems, not burned in an incinerator,” Wirsig said.

Health Canada’s Toxic Substances Division, recommends minimizing the risk of exposure to dioxins and furans by “not burn(ing) garbage, especially construction materials that might contain wood preservatives or plastic.”

On January 7, Environmental Defence wrote to Emerald EFW raising concerns about the second ESR, including low public participation, uncharacterized waste, the acceptance of recyclable materials, and hazardous waste screening. 

“Those wishing to review the amended ESR were required to sift through 1,400 pages of documents to determine what, if anything, was changed from the previous version. This approach is not respectful of public involvement and bodes ill for future public transparency regarding a project of this magnitude,” the letter mentioned.

It also points to the issues with fly and APC ash disposal, the lack of consideration for PFAS, and discrepancies in emissions estimates, particularly for dioxins and furans. 

The 14 environmental and community groups continue to push for a full environmental assessment.

“We’re asking the provincial government to put a stop to the incinerator expansion process and conduct a fuller assessment. The government should start by getting an accurate picture of the current state of air pollution in the area around the incinerator, something the company conducting its own environmental review seemed incapable of doing,” Steve Papagiannis, board member of the Brampton Environmental Alliance, said in a statement shared with The Pointer.

“The community deserves to know the impacts of this massive expansion and the alternatives to burning waste in the first place.”

The Pointer contacted Emerald Energy From Waste Inc. for a statement but did not receive a response.

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