WHITBY FREE PRLSS, WEDNESDAY. OCTORER 3n. 1985 PAGE 4 P>ublished every wednesday w hitby _ PEMMANUEL HADZIPETROS by M. B.M. Publishing Community Editor m ~and P'hotography Inc. FM//m2AlPhone f6li8-0111 VALERIE COWEN W t) JJ u r d ~ The Free Press Building, Advrtlslng Manager Voiceof theCountyTown Michael an Burgess, Pubisher- Managing Editor 1:11rock Street North, SecondclassMai P.O. Box 206, whitby, ont. Rogisiaaion No 5351 The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. Landfill-Clean-up Buck Stops With Us You'd be surprised at how much you could learn about people from the things they throw away. Ar- cheologists have known this for a long time: gar- bage dumps are one of the chief sources of infor- mation on the daily lives and habits of long-dead societies. With this In mind, a visit to the Brock West lan- dfill site ln North Pickering is an eye-opening ex- perience. First a few figures by way of background. The dump site occuples approximately 400 acres, on which a small mountain of garbage is steadily rising. Today it stands at about 80 feet above sea level. On an average working day, which lasts ten hours (except for Saturdays, when the site Is open only f ive and a half hours), 4500 tons of garbage is I AN WRXaN7R GLOBALNZiWB~~ j OTTAWA - The capital has two great advantages over larger cities, for those who need nature to sur- vive. In the first place, Ottawa itself is really a vast park, maintalned by the taxpayers of Canada. And in the second place, Ottawa is small enough that you can point the car in almost any direction, and be into the countryside ln 10 or 15 minutes. I thought that would be enough, and it wasn't until a recent weekend, when the fall colors were near their peaks In the Ottawa valley, that I began to feel that it wasn't. I drove down to Portland to spend a couple of hap- py hours tinkering with the boat, and then drove up to Calabogie, through Perth and the town of Lanark, on highway 511. It was one of those typical fall days when I went through Lahark - blustery and cold with brooding bluelgray clouds, and short, sudden fren- zies of rain that had me fooling with the wiper switch almost constantly. And then, from under the western edge of that brooding cloud, there came a shaft of sun that illuminated a patch of the shield country ahead of me. A rocky hillside in the distance glowed softly wlth the reds and yellows of our national amblem, and stood out sharply f rom the shadowed landscape around It. And then the sun came out more fully while the rain spat on the windshield from the dark mass of cloud above, and everything was bathed in a golden light. The colors of fall almost throbbed on both sides of the highway. There was even a rain- bow. When I stopped, the air was cool and clean and there was profound silence, and I realized I hadn't had enough of it lately. The next day, my wife and I were in the country together, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa valley, up above Quyon. Blue hills in the distance, fall colors in every patch of bush, along every fence line; a sweet whiff of maple wood smoke now and then; and very high above us; just under the clouds, we could see the ragged V formations of Canada geese and hear their faint gabbling as they talked their way south. The geese have long been important to us. Somehow, they symbolize the seasons and the natural forces, and if we lose track of their migrations, we feel we're not fully alive. dumped. This adds up to one million tons in a year. Since June 1975, when the site became fully operational following an agreement between Metro Toronto and the municipality of Pickering governing its use, 9.75 million tons of refuse from Metro and Durham region have been hauled to Brock West. And by the time the agreement expires in 1992 13 million tons of garbage will have been dumped. Enough for the numbers. They don't mean very much to most of us anyway. Picture if you can an archeologist from Mars landing in North Pickering and surveying the dump site. Firstly, he would note the richness of the surrounding farmland and the clean, well-ordered towns that dotted the landscape. As he approached the dump, he would be im- pressed by the steady stream of truck traffic along the narrow, bumpy road leading to the great mound. The next thing that might attract his attention would be the thousands of fat gulls flocking to the site from the south. Finally, he would be confronted with the gar- bage, the mountains of daily refuse that attract the screaming gulls to what amounts to a never- ending feast. Judging by the tons of food, wood, paper, bot- tles, cans and ail the other untold items that each and every one of us throw away everyday without thinking, our Martian archeologist would be justified in concluding that he had stumbled on to some northern El Dorado. Only an incredibly wealthy society, he might surmise, could afford to waste so many valuable resources and give up large tracts of land on which to dump them. One Metro Works Department employee at Brock West put it succintly: "Working here makes you realize what an incredibly wasteful society we live ln." The problem bouls down to lifestyle and money. Nobody wants a garbage dump in their neigh- borhood but how many of us are willing to pay the price for exploring alternatives? They're not cheap. A modern incinerator, for example, with smokestack filters to prevent air pollution, would cost at least $30 million. That means higher taxes for everybody. Queen's Park would have to get in on the act because Durham Region is ln no position to foot the bill alone. It would be in the interests of Metropolitan Toronto to get involved as well. A plant large enough to handle the needs of the eastern half of Metro and Durham Region would reduce the demand for more landfills. Incinerator technology is developing rapidly and it is already possible to extract steam heat and even hydro power from some of the newer plants. In this way, government investors would be able to recover some of the taxpayer's money. But even if the provincial, Metro Toronto and Durham Regional govemnments came to a funding agreement and even if the plant were to be a money-making concern, each and every one of us - - the taxpayers -- would have to pay. There are other, more immediate options, such as the extension of recycling throughout Durham. The region is already a trailblazer in this field. Whitby has much to be proud of in its West Lynde experiment, with curbside pick-up. We believe this should be extended beyond its April 1 cut-off date and that it should be broadened to cover all urban and rural areas of the town. The region should also be looking at a way to extend this to every household in Durham. Finally, we have to be more aware as individuals of what we throw away. Every pound retained and every pound recycled is a pound less for the dump site. ar