Feature Article April 29
Feature Article September 2, 2004
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb Home
Contact Us
Sawmills in dispute with MoE
by Jeff Green
A meeting that was scheduled for August 26 between Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MoE) Officials and a sawmill owner in Lanark County, but never took place, has led to claims on both sides that the other did not want to meet.
According to John Steele of the Ministry of the Environments Toronto office, the meeting was cancelled because Mr. Ito, the owner of Lanark Cedar, did not return a phone message asking him to contact the Ministry about an agenda for the meeting.
Our normal procedure is, before a meeting, to agree to an agenda. We postponed the meeting until we agree on an agenda, John Steele told the News, adding we are offering these meetings to companies to explain to them how they can come back into compliance with the legislation. We are not interested in punishing anyone.
Phillip Ito, however, said he did not receive a phone call from any MoE Official concerning an agenda for the meeting. He said that he did find that a message had been left on his answering service on Wednesday, August 25, informing him that the meeting was being cancelled.
Steve Burns, the District Manager from the Ottawa office phoned on Wednesday afternoon, and left a message on my machine, saying the meeting wasnt going to happen, Ito said when contacted by the News earlier this week. Ito also said that Steve Burns had contacted him earlier this summer, setting up a meeting on August 26 at 1:30 pm to talk about what MoE inspector Andrew Polley had found when he did an inspection at Lanark Cedar one year earlier.
Even though Polleys inspection has not resulted in any Ministry orders being issued against Lanark Cedar, Phillip Ito fears the ministry will make demands on him that may cost him dearly. At the time of the inspection, Andrew Polleys attitude irked Phillip Ito. He said We think you may have a problem with your wood residuals. When I told him that this is all a natural product. He turned and said to me, You know I have the power to shut you down. I didnt appreciate that, recalls Ito.
When Steve Burns phoned earlier this summer to set up the August 26 meeting, Ito complained about Polleys attitude, and also said the was going to invite legal counsel and a representative of the Wood Producers Association of Ontario (WPAO), of which Ito is a member, to attend the meeting.
Burns had no problem with that at the time, Ito said.
A few days before the scheduled meeting, the WPAO sent out a media release concerning the meeting. The media release stated that this visit to Lanark Cedar is in regards to wood residuals and their [the MoEs] abatement and compliance initiative that we have been opposing for the last 18 months. The release then pointed to what it called a lack of scientific basis the MoE has been operating under in this matter and the absence of any goodwill from the MoE to the industry, among other factors, and concluded that the WPAO will continue to oppose any action against a member mill.
The media release was picked up by a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen, who conducted interviews with Ito, WPAO director Timothy Schwan, and ministry spokesperson Mark Rabbior sometime between August 23 and 25. The reporter, Kristin Goff, then published a story in the Ottawa Citizen entitled Lanark sawmill latest inspection target on August 26, the day of the aborted meeting.
Although no MoE official attended at Lanark Cedar, about 75 members of the Lanark Landowners Association (LLA) did attend. Ito, who is a member of the LLA, told the News that he had not invited the LLA to come, but that he had heard that they might be coming, and I had no objection.
For their part the Lanark Landowners claimed the MoE officials did not attend because they knew that Lanark Landowners members would be at Lanark Cedar.
The cowardly bureaucrats often intimidate and coerce independent sawmills, that stand alone, but this day MOE caught wind of the defiance that guarded the sawmill gates. In typical bureaucratic fashion the MOE lion found an excuse to stay in the safety and comfort of its lair rather than face the determined one hundred landowners in Lanark, according to a statement by LLA president Randy Hillier. The statement also says Leona Dombrowsky and her unaccountable bureaucrats will not step once more into Lanark or Renfrew.
It is no coincidence that this issue has come to the fore in Lanark and Renfrew Counties. Both counties are part of the region of Eastern Ontario that is dealt with by the Ottawa office of the Ministry. It is the Ottawa office that, in the past three years, has entered into what Timothy Schwan of the Wood Producers Association of Ontario calls an abatement and compliance initiative for the primary wood using industry. Schwan is a sawmill operator himself, and his mill, along with 41 others in Renfrew and Lanark Counties have come to the attention of the MoEs Ottawa office.
No compliance order was issued after a ministry inspection on Timothy Schwans site, but he says the experience has taught him that he is vulnerable, and has led him to become part sawmill operator, part political agitator.
A Ministry Fact sheet says Manufacturing operations that process raw wood, such as saw mills, paper mills and furniture manufacturers, generate wood bark, sawdust, shavings, wood chips and cut offs. There is clear scientific evidence that, if improperly managed, wood residue can negatively impact the environment.
Timothy Schwan disputes this definition of residual wood as a waste. Sawdust, bark, slabwood, trims and chips, no matter its age, is used in a great number of methods, ie. mulch, hog fuel, paper production to name a few. Schwan also says that despite two years of searching we have been unable to find one instance where wood residuals could be cited for impacting water quality.
It particularly angers Timothy Schwan that the Ministry of the Environment has been forcing sawmill operators to pay to prove whether they are causing pollution or not. He refers to orders by the Ministry that some sawmill operators were put under order to hire engineering consultants to determine whether their piles of wood residuals were having an adverse effect on the environment. The costs at least $60,000. Not many small, family-run sawmills have $60,000 available for this, he said.
What we have here is a case of bureaucracy run amuck. If the people in the Ottawa office are not stopped, the way they are applying the regulations could easily spread to other jurisdictions throughout the province, Schwan concluded.
