Burgeoning urban populations are very much the trend worldwide and especially so here in North America. One of the inevitabilities that comes with this is increased waste management challenges based on the fact that so many more people are producing household and other waste and it is accumulating in greater amounts at the same locations. That volume stands to become unmanageable unless civic and municipal governments pivot to accommodate it accordingly, and here in Ontario our Province has done well with it to this point.
Waste disposal sites will include landfills, and of course as a Colborne and Trenton dumpster rental service we’re explicitly familiar with the workings of them. We also know that regulations limiting what can and cannot be entered into a landfill need to be enforced with a lot more teeth, and the good news is that new penalties for landfill polluters here indicate that may be starting to happen. Call us first to rent a dumpster with delivery here, but let’s use this month’s blog entry to take a look at these new environmental protection laws and what they will entail.
40, 000 cubic metres of site space is considerable, and that’s the type of size that landfills need to be nowadays to accommodate the average production of waste that SHOULD be going into them from the municipal regions they serve. But the problem is that some of that valuable space continues to be taken up by material that has entered the landfill illegitimately, and the Provincial government has decided this needs to stop.
Targeted Enforcement
These changes will allow the province to take stronger action against illegal activity by giving enforcement officials the ability to issue monetary penalties to open and closed landfilling sites with an approved capacity of this size. And enforcement of the new legislation will allow monetary penalties to be levied, something that is needed because without them the ministry must take violators to court. That means a lengthy and costly process that can often take years to get results.
With an expansion of environmental penalties to protect landfill facilities, the hope is that it will give governmental regulatory agencies more of an ability to take stronger actions to protect Ontarians through swift financial consequences for breaking the law. Building on existing frameworks for environmental violation penalties, what we can also expect to see here is more targeted enforcement of specific landfill disposal violations that have the greatest detrimental effect on the operation of these facilities.
Further compliance and enforcement efforts will be seen at facilities that emit pollution or discharge effluent directly to land and surface waters, and petroleum facilities that discharge sulphur dioxide into the air. It’s notable that the past 3 years have seen more than 95% of facilities issued penalties with those facilities being able to demonstrate actions to prevent or mitigate the violation and/or for having an environmental management system in place.
The expectation now will be that they need to meet a performance metric, and efforts will be made to ensure there’s no lack of clarity on what that metric is. Much more involved that ordering a dumpster rental in Trenton and getting a disposal bin delivery in Colborne, but that’s the way it should be.
Suitably Stiff Penalties
Possible environmental penalties could range from $1,000 per day for more minor violations to $100,000 per day for ones that are deemed more serious. The funds collected will then be reinvested in impacted communities through the Ontario Community Environment Fund to pay for shoreline cleanups or tree planting.
There is also a hope that over time enforcement of this type may also help to make some landfills less odorous as waste material that shouldn’t be there to begin with starts to become less prevalent or eliminated from the landfill entirely. The change came about after consultations with the public, industry associations, the agricultural sector, environmental non-governmental organizations, the municipal sector, and First Nations.
Call Load n’ Lift first and get the best rates and service for dumpster rentals and waste disposal in the Trenton and Colborne area of Ontario, and for neighboring communities of Belleville, Camborne, Demorestville, and Port Hope among others. We can offer same day dumpster bin deliveries and contractors also have the option of a lease to own disposal bin, something that will be appealing to some home builders or renovators too. We have disposal bins for rent in 7, 8, 11, 16, 20, and 25 yard sizes and we are fully insured for all jobs.
