Contaminated soil hot potato
Dear Premier John Horgan and Cowichan MLA Sonia Furstenau:
It’s fine for folks to demand a mountain of poison soil be removed from South Island Aggregates’ yawning landfill near Shawnigan Lake.
But where can this soil be moved to?
Brave residents’ victory that saw SIA’s soil-dumping permit finally pulled by Victoria rings hollow if South Cowichanians now copy downstream thinking that saw that tainted mystery soil dumped in SIA’s pit off Stebbings Road.
This toxic tale, with no seeming end, could potentially see another community receive our dirty dirt of unknown tonnage, giving Shawnigan an undeserved black eye.
The hot-potato of toxic-soil hauling started with a provincial permit given to SIA against unanimous local opposition.
Provincial soil treatment sites are far flung and could also leak toxins.
Victoria owes South Cowichan taxpayers bulletproof answers about where and when this gypsy soil could go next.
Costs to ship it, plus indefinite contamination monitoring of Shawnigan Lake’s priceless watershed, should be billed to SIA’s owners and engineering firm Active Earth.
Peter W. Rusland
Duncan