HWRS to Appeal Otter Lake Landfill Decision

The Halifax-Waste Resource Society is appealing the March 22 provincial decision that will allow Otter Lake Landfill to operate without its long-time protections against odour, litter, hazardous waste and infestations of rodents and scavenger birds.

The HWRS represents all residents of the Halifax Regional Municipality, but in particular those who reside within a five-km. radius of the landfill. The society is a signatory to the 1999 agreement with the Halifax Regional Municipality that permitted the landfill to be sited at Otter Lake. The agreement also set broad terms under which the facility would operate.

The appeal will be made to Tim Halman, the Nova Scotia Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Should any aggrieved individual or organization also wish to appeal the decision, the pdf appeal form can be downloaded here: https://novascotia.ca/nse/dept/docs/Notice-of-Appeal-Form.pdf. A $108.95 fee is required to accompany a completed form.  The deadline to lodge an appeal on this matter is April 21.

The administrative-level decision of March 22 sets forth the conditions that will permit Halifax Regional Municipality, the owner of the landfill, and Mirror Nova Scotia Ltd., the operator, to deactivate the front-end processor and waste stabilization facility.

The front-end processor opens and inspects all residential garbage arriving at the landfill and removes decaying organic matter, hazardous waste and recyclables such as plastics and paper. The waste stabilization facility takes the retrieved organic matter and renders it inert before it is buried with other waste at the landfill. Decaying, unprocessed organic matter is known to attract rodent and scavenger bird populations and to cause noxious odours at landfills.

The HWRS and the Community Monitoring Committee opposed the recently approved HRM-Mirror Nova Scotia application to deactivate the front-end processor and waste stabilization facility.

The CMC, established by the HWRS and HRM, does community monitoring of the landfill’s operations.

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