St. Marys council turns down request to provide residual waste services for City of Toronto

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Town of St. Marys will not provide local landfill space to help the City of Toronto dispose of residual waste as it deals with impending landfill-capacity issues.

At the June 24 St. Marys council meeting, councillors voted to have staff submit a response to the City of Toronto’s request for expression of interest indicating the Town of St. Marys is not interested in accepting, selling or partnering with the City of Toronto for their residual waste management services.

“They are basically starting the process that we started a decade ago related to our own landfill expansion where they’re running out of capacity at their Green Lane facility and are looking throughout the province, basically, to see if anyone is interested in supporting them in any way related to their residual-waste strategy moving forward,” St. Marys environmental services manager Dave Blake told councillors.

“Because we went through this process for the last decade or so … we have looked at additional sites within the community for our own landfill needs, and didn’t really find viable alternatives to our existing landfill, which is why we decided to go down the path for expansion at our existing facility. But what they’re looking for in annual capacity is far in excess of anything that we would be able to accommodate.”

According to the staff report to council, the City of Toronto is exploring long-term waste management solutions due to the impending capacity exhaustion of the Green Lane Landfill by 2035. Currently, the Green Lane Landfill in the Township of Southwald handles approximately 450,000 tonnes of residual waste annually, with projections indicating a need to manage over 500,000 tonnes within the next 25 years. The City of Toronto has issued a request for expression of interest to municipalities interested in handling their excess waste.

In 2024, the Town of St. Marys received approval from the Ontario Ministry of Environment Conservation and Parks (MECP) to expand the St. Marys landfill site. The expansion of the St. Marys landfill site would allow for the suitable disposal of waste generated from within the Town of St. Marys for a 40-year planning period.

The approved capacity as part of this expansion is approximately 700,000 cubic metres and enables the town to effectively manage resources and costs related to waste management within the community.

However, this volume, in comparison to what would be required for the City of Toronto waste management needs, would not be sufficient, Blake wrote in his report.

Additionally, as part the environmental assessment completed by the town, an assessment of alternative sites within the Town of St. Marys was undertaken. Given the town’s small geographic area, existing development and complex Source Water Protection Area, there were few alternative sites suitable for a municipal landfill, let alone a large operation that would be required to manage waste from the City of Toronto.

Before council voted to have staff respond to Toronto’s request, Coun. Marg Luna asked if there is any impending or newly enacted provincial legislation that could force St. Marys to accept residual waste from Toronto.

“At this point, no, we haven’t seen anything that would say that a municipality is forced to partner with another municipality for solid waste,” CAO Brent Kittmer said. “Given the amount of money and time we’ve invested in having landfill capacity – it’s something we view as a very significant resource for our community – we would strongly oppose any sort of legislation like that.”

Currently, the St. Marys landfill only accepts waste generated from within the town, with the exception of household hazardous waste, which is also accepted from residents of Perth South.