‘Unfair to expose already burdened community’ to pollution from Brampton waste incinerator: report
Commuters passing through Bramalea GO Station are no strangers to the sharp, sour smell that often hangs in the air. The nearby cause is not immediately obvious.
Tucked just behind the station, stands the hidden source: a waste incinerator that’s been quietly burning for over 30 years.
The privately owned Emerald Energy From Waste (EEFW) facility is proposing a major expansion—one that would more than quadruple its capacity—making it Canada’s largest waste-burning facility.
If approved, the concerns could extend far beyond the smell.
Public health officials at the Region of Peel warn that increased emissions may worsen air and soil pollution, raising the risk of cancer, respiratory diseases and heart conditions among nearby residents.
The proposed expansion would also drive a ‘six-fold increase’ in greenhouse gas emissions—posing a major setback for the Region of Peel’s climate targets.
The company plans to redevelop its incineration system in three phases, replacing the existing facility and building a new one on the same site to increase its capacity from 182,000 to up to 900,000 tonnes per year.
It also means “the plant would need to truck in garbage from all over the Province in order to support its business model,” Environmental Defence’s senior program manager for plastics, Karen Wirsig, said during a Brampton Environmental Alliance meeting on the incinerator in October.
Waste containers outside the facility.
(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)
The proposal has triggered alarm among public health experts and local environmental groups, who say surrounding communities—already burdened by pollution and health disparities—could face severe consequences.
A recent report from the region’s Medical Officer of Health and Commissioner of Health Services warns that additional emissions from the expanded facility would increase cumulative exposure to air pollutants—posing serious health risks to nearby residents, many of whom are vulnerable.
Local residents are already at risk of experiencing higher rates of chronic conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and diabetes.
“Peel Public Health points out that this area of Peel already has significant air pollution and people living there are more likely to suffer from certain health conditions, including diabetes and COPD,” Brampton Environmental Alliance’s Steve Papagiannis shared in a statement.
These health concerns are compounded by deep-rooted social inequities in the area, including a higher proportion of racialized residents, single-parent families, individuals without high school diplomas and elevated unemployment rates.
The largest income group in Brampton are the 16.92 percent of residents who earn between $20,000 and $29,000.
Currently, the facility owner, Emerald’s, proposed expansion has completed the provincially required Environmental Screening process under the Environmental Assessment Act. It included studies on air quality, human health risk and a human impact assessment.
Peel Public Health participated as an interested party and reviewed the study methods and outcomes to ensure accuracy and alignment with Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) standards.
Air quality modelling analyzed worst-case operating conditions across the three phases of expansion. Exposure levels were estimated at both the facility’s property line and nearby community locations—such as a sports field 700 metres away and an apartment building 1.6 kilometres away.
While the modelling indicated that most pollutants would remain within provincial and federal limits, several were flagged as concerning including benzo(a)pyrene, nitrogen dioxide, dioxins and furans, mercury, cadmium and sulfur dioxide—all byproducts of combustion known to harm human health. The proposed expansion is also projected to cause a six-fold increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The Emerald Incinerator, marked by the red pin, is located beside Highway 407 and sits in close proximity to commercial businesses, health centres, and residential subdivisions.
(Google Satellite)
As previously reported by The Pointer, the facility’s own Environmental Screening Report (ESR) indicates the area surrounding the incinerator is already burdened with high levels of air pollution, including elevated concentrations of hydrochloric acid and benzo(a)pyrene (B[a]P)—a probable human carcinogen that exceeds provincial air quality standards.
(Region of Peel)
The region’s Human Health Risk Assessment found that, under worst-case scenarios, certain air pollutants—specifically nitrogen oxides and trichloroethylene—exceeded health effect benchmarks at community locations, particularly the nearby sports field.
These exceedances could lead to adverse respiratory events. Combined with already elevated background levels of pollutants from nearby highways, the airport, and other industrial sources, the cumulative exposure raises the risk of negative health outcomes for residents.
According to the World Health Organization's 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.
The Peel Public Health report comes as Environmental Defence, along with the Brampton Environmental Alliance (BEA), Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), awaits a response from the provincial government on applications calling for a halt to the proposed expansion of the Emerald Energy From Waste facility and a review of the province’s outdated Guideline A-7, which governs air pollution control for municipal waste incineration.
The organizations argue that the guideline is outdated and lacks critical safeguards, including continuous monitoring for particulate matter and mercury, adequate controls and semi-continuous monitoring of dioxin and furan emissions in both flue gas and fly ash, proper air pollution and stack monitoring during non-routine operations like startup and shutdown, and public access to pollution monitoring and testing results.
“We feel that Emerald’s environmental screening report falls short in many areas related to current air pollution and testing from the existing facility, let alone what we could expect from their projections if the incinerator undergoes a massive expansion,” Sierra Club Peel’s Executive Committee member Steve Kirby said in a statement.
Environmental Defence has yet to receive a response from the province regarding its applications to review Guideline A-7 and conduct a full environmental assessment for the proposed facility expansion—despite the 60-day deadline having passed nearly two weeks ago.
In a statement to The Pointer, the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks confirmed it has received requests for the proposed expansion to undergo a comprehensive Environmental Assessment process.
“These requests are currently under review and the expansion cannot be implemented until a decision is made,” the ministry said.
The ministry says it’s awaiting an application from Emerald Energy From Waste Inc. for amendments to its existing environmental permissions. “Once received, the ministry will carefully review the applications prior to making a decision.”
“The ministry’s review of the company’s applications will focus on assessing whether the expansion of the facility is designed correctly and is capable of operating in a manner that is protective of the environment and human health, and that our stringent standards for environmental protection can be met,” MECP’s spokesperson Lindsay Davidson told The Pointer.
On April 12, Peel Regional Council voted to send a letter to the Ministers of Environment and Health raising serious concerns about the proposed expansion’s public health impacts.
“This is black and white. This is science,” Brampton Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor said during the council meeting. “We had a lot of groups come, delegate about this, raising the red flag about this issue…here we have a project like this, that if it goes through, harms all those kids living in those areas. It is very unfortunate to see that we don’t really have the power to dictate what happens there—but we do have the power to advocate to the province.”
The letter which will be sent to the province will call for stronger pollution controls, independent community oversight, transparent emissions data, and a serious evaluation of the project’s climate and health impacts.
(Region of Peel)
Environmental Defence’s senior program manager for plastics Karen Wirsig told The Pointer she’s pleased with the decision and feels the Peel Public Health report has “really lifted up the concerns and given even new evidence to support (our) concerns about the environmental racism and environmental justice implications of the proposal.”
She was relieved to hear that the letter would also be forwarded to local MPs and MPPs to generate awareness about the issue since “there is a significant portion of the population around the incinerator who may not even be aware of the proposed expansion due to language barriers.”
“Many of them may not understand English, which makes it even more critical for both the proponent and the province to conduct proper outreach in multiple languages to ensure these residents are informed, as they are likely to be the first affected,” she said.
Kirby welcomed Peel Public Health’s call for more frequent and comprehensive monitoring of pollutants, particularly in the soil—an area that the company has so far neglected to address. But monitoring alone would not be enough.
“Pollution from burning waste produces some of the most toxic “forever chemicals” known to science and it’s unfair to expose this already burdened community to even more,” he said.
“Ultimately, what we'd like to see is for the province to say no to this expansion and to really get serious about policies that will reduce the waste even if the population grows. We do not need to see so much waste produced in Ontario. Producers need to take more responsibility for the practices that they engage in,” Wirsig added.
Emerald’s waste data from 2023 shows that up to 75 percent of household waste and 100 percent of some commercial loads consist of materials like organics, paper, and plastics, which should be diverted for recycling or composting, not incinerated.
Across North America, jurisdictions are moving in a different direction. States like California, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont—and cities like Austin and New York City—have banned the incineration or landfilling of organic waste, mandating composting instead.
In Canada, Nova Scotia’s 1995 Solid Waste Management Strategy banned organics in landfills, and by 2011, 94 percent of households were composting food and yard waste—up from just 20 percent in 1994.
Ontario’s own Waste-Free Ontario strategy aims to divert 80 percent of waste from disposal by 2050. But with little progress since 2017, critics say relying on incineration contradicts the province’s long-term goals, and raises concerns about the growing pressure on landfill capacity.
“Waste reduction, reuse, repair, composting and recycling are all much better ways of dealing with the problem,” Wirsig noted, “…burning waste is neither good for human health nor environmentally friendly.”
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