Two more temporary dump sites will close and two more will open in the next 24 hours, the city announced Friday morning.
Caledonia Park and North Toronto Memorial arrival are at capacity and will stop accepting trash at 7 p.m. Friday night. The waste will remain on site until the strike is over and will be maintained with pesticides and odor control.
On Saturday morning, Amesbury Arena near Lawrence Avenue and Black Creek Drive and Otter Creek Centre, near Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue will open for business.
This brings the total of temporary dumps in city parks to 27 as Toronto heads toward its sixth week without curbside garbage collection.
As for the inches of standing water accumulating in the basketball courts and hockey arenas in the last 24 hours due to heavy rainfall, Geoff Rathbone, Toronto’s general manager of solid waste, said that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.
The city specifically chose hard surfaces for the strike to prevent contaminated water from running off into the parks. The water he said collects and then is pumped out and hauled away.
"The fact that we’re seeing standing water in the temporary dump sites is in fact an indication that our environmental plan is working," he explained. "We have purposely closed off all drainage in the sites and in fact attempting to create if you like a bathtub effect whereby we are accumulating any water that has come into contact with pest control materials or with the waste itself. That water is them pumped with specialty vehicles and then taken for safe disposal.
So far 50,000 litres of waste water have been pumped out of Wishing Well Park and the city is attempting to do same at Taylor Creek Park.
But councillor Case Ootes (Toronto Danforth) said the rubbish from the temporary sites should be removed. The Responsible Government Group, made of of conservative councillors, demaded this week that the city truck away garbage from existing dumps and reuse the sites rather than opening new ones.
Mayor David Miller, however, has said that removing the garbage now is logistically impossible, because dozens of trucks would have to cross three different picket lines, the operation would become a flashpoint for union blockades and there is not enough staff available to properly clean up the sites.
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