County officials aren't giving any time of day to a request from the Toronto area to dump garbage at the regional landfill.
"It's not ours to give away," says Ken Antaya, the LaSalle mayor voting alongside his county colleagues at the Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority against reconsidering a resolution which prohibits allowing outside garbage into the landfill.
City councillors at the EWSWA wanted to consider the request to bring in extra trash as way to bring in extra revenue to help deal with the authority's current $351,000 budget deficit in 2015. Ed Sleiman was the only city councillor to vote alongside county representatives against reconsidering the resolution.Mayor Ken Antaya calls the discussion redundant. The authority already has a resolution to not take outside garbage #sx
— Ricardo Veneza (@RicardoVeneza) September 1, 2015
"It's the right thing to do," says Antaya. "It's not the popular thing to do obviously, you want to reduce taxes, but we're not here to always do the popular thing we're here to do the right thing and the right thing is to preserve capacity."
Antaya calls the landfill space precious. Doesn't want to impact future generations for the sake of a bit of money now #sx — Ricardo Veneza (@RicardoVeneza) September 1, 2015
The anonymous request, made through a lawyer, was looking for a two to three-year agreement to bring between 50,000 and 200,000 tonnes of garbage a year from th GTA to the landfill in Essex County. The outside garbage would have reduced the current 2040 life expectancy of the landfill by a year.