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Public has month to comment on Site 41 plan

BY Laurie Watt January 22, 2008 14:01

The Ministry of the Environment has once again increased the public comment period, to Feb. 29, for a Permit to Take Water on Site 41 in Tiny Township.

In a letter to Site 41 Community Monitoring Committee chairperson Ray Millar, MOE water resources supervisor Ian Kerr granted the extension, to allow the CMC to meet with Simcoe County experts at its regular meeting on Feb. 14, and give the committee two weeks to formulate its response and comment.

“The ministry is willing to accommodate the request of the CMC for a third and final extension of the commenting period to Feb. 29 … this results in a comment period of 80 days,” Kerr told Millar.

Kerr added the MOE would likely make a decision on the application during the second week of March.

Simcoe County has applied for permission to remove the application that requests permission to remove 820,000 litres of water per day, up to a maximum of 275 days – or as much as 225 million litres of groundwater.

“It’s really about five or six garden hoses running full for 24 hours a day,” said Rob McCullough, the county’s environmental services manager. The water must be removed, to allow work to begin on the leachate collection system, as well as other preliminary work.

Too-high water pressure during the work would risk removing too much clay, which would reduce the effectiveness of the clay as a protective measure on the site, in addition to the liner and the upward groundwater gradient.

McCullough noted the permit requests the maximum the county would envision needing to pump.

“If we’re constructing in August when the (water) pressure is lower, the amount of water we have to take could be virtually none. We submitted for our worst-case scenario.”

By contrast, last year Barrie did not, and a road project in the city core was stalled for several months, while the city had to reapply for a permit. The project remains undone, with a proposed five-lane road linking numerous downtown streets only being two lanes and bypassing several streets.

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