The mayor of Cache Creek wants Metro Vancouver to remove about 2,000 tonnes of hazardous waste that was illegally dumped at the landfill in his village.
The waste, consisting of particulates from the incinerator’s air filter known as fly ash, contains concentrations of leachable cadmium that were in some samples more than twice the provincial limit, according to Paul Henderson, manager of Metro Vancouver’s solid waste department.
“If there is hazardous waste at the landfill, which it appears as if there is, then we would expect that those responsible for having that waste deposited at the Cache Creek landfill also be responsible for removing that waste,” Cache Creek mayor John Ranta said in an interview.
Cadmium is a toxic metal and known carcinogen. It is found in small amounts in garbage, usually from items such as batteries and hard plastics, Henderson said.
The waste in question was unintentionally dumped during the summer due to a reporting error by Covanta, the energy company that operates the Burnaby incinerator, which is owned by Metro Vancouver.
Officials at Metro Vancouver did not receive test results indicating the abnormal levels of cadmium – which showed up in fly ash collected from the incinerator in July and August – until Sept. 26, Henderson said.
By the time Metro Vancouver found out about the cadmium, the fly ash had already been dumped at Cache Creek.
“We deeply regret this event and are working to resolve this lapse in communication,” Covanta spokesman James Regan said in a statement, noting that the results have been regularly reported on a monthly basis for 13 years and have always been normal. “At no time was information related to this issue purposefully withheld.”
The information may not have come to light at all had Wastech – the company that transports waste from the incinerator to Cache Creek and operates the landfill – not asked Covanta to provide the test results for July and August, Ranta said in an interview.
Wastech did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, but in an Oct. 18 letter to Henderson obtained by The Sun, Wastech general manager Janet Tecklenborg indicated that fly ash from the Burnaby waste incinerator, before treatment “contains enough heavy metals with phosphoric acid and lime to be classified as hazardous waste.”
“During the July-August time frame, approximately 1,800 tonnes of potentially hazardous waste was generated by Covanta, and unknowingly handled, transported and disposed of in a landfill not classified to receive hazardous material,” Tecklenborg wrote in the letter. “All these actions are in violation of the B.C. Hazardous Waste Regulations, and they are of serious concern to us.”
Ranta called the delay in reporting the test results “totally unacceptable,” accusing both Covanta and Metro Vancouver of not exercising due diligence in making sure material coming out of the incinerator was safe for disposal at the landfill.
Removal of the fly ash is possible – it’s in a separate, contained area of the landfill – but it’s unclear whether that will happen.
Wastech, Metro Vancouver and the B.C. Ministry of Environment have hired a team of consultants to test the leachable cadmium levels of the fly ash from July and August deposited at Cache Creek, Henderson said.
“The program is still underway and ultimately it’ll be the Ministry of Environment who will determine what the appropriate approach is,” Henderson said. “It could be relocating the fly ash, it could be some sort of remediation of the material.”
No fly ash from the Burnaby incinerator has been deposited in Cache Creek since Metro was informed of the test results at the end of September, Henderson said. It is instead being transported to another landfill near Hinton, Alta.
As of earlier this week, consultants had taken 57 samples from the fly ash at Cache Creek, of which three showed levels of leachable cadmium beyond the legal limit, Henderson said.
“What we’ve concluded … is that there hasn’t been an impact on public health or the environment as a result of that ash being placed at Cache Creek,” Henderson said. “It’s an issue related to the permitability of that material to be disposed at that site, not specifically the environmental implications of it.”
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