Hamilton is throwing its support behind the Town of Ingersoll.
The city’s planning committee has voted to join more than 50 other communities, in solidarity with the Southwestern Ontario town of 12,000 and its fight to keep a private landfill for Toronto garbage out of its watershed.
Ingersoll Mayor Ted Comiskey stresses that the town isn’t trying to tell other municipalities not to have a landfill, but to agree that it has “the right to say yes or no.”
Comiskey argues that it’s about “the right to look after our people” and to protect lakes and rivers from contamination.
In approving a motion of support with Ingersoll, some councillors have compared its fight with Hamilton’s own successful battle against a company that wanted to burn industrial waste on lands controlled federally by the Hamilton Port Authority.
That project faded away last year, after the provincial government agreed to the city’s request for a full environmental assessment.
Comiskey says Ingersoll’s battle involves a private company that plans to haul waste to Oxford County and to dispose of it less than a kilometre from Ingersoll’s border near the Thames River.
Comments