The City of Hamilton is going to court after the province filed charges in connection to “odour issues” at the city’s central composting facility on Burlington Street East.
On Friday, the city revealed it and a number of contractors received a summons to appear in front of the Ontario court of justice in the new year to answer for the alleged discharging or permitting the discharge of a contaminant contrary to the Environmental Protection Act.
“City representatives will attend the court date in February and a further update will be available after City Council has an opportunity to hear the outcome of the court appearance,” the city said in a release on Nov. 27.
The case is tied to the voluntary closure of the central composting facility in June 2018 after numerous complaints about odours from residents in the surrounding area.
The city did reopen the facility in February 2019 after a number of operational changes, including reducing capacity, eliminating use of a curing building, moving some processing offsite and banning grass and leaf and yard waste from the Green Bin program.
The city also says it has also taken on the monitoring of air quality through a third party in recent years and stopped accepting material from other municipalities.
The summons comes a week after the Ministry of the Environment (MECP) ordered the city to come up with a plan to clean Chedoke Creek and Cootes Paradise after a 24-billion-litre spill of sewage and runoff water into the creek over a four-year period.
The city and its contractors working with the composting facility are scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 3, 2021.