The farming community of Tiny Township in Ontario is home to something entirely unique — a series of bubbling artesian wells that contain some of the cleanest and most abundant fresh water on the planet.
The water in the Alliston aquifer is so pure that it equates to Arctic ice core samples taken from snows deposited 10,000 years ago, before the advent of modern industry and its resulting pollution.
But a proposed landfill, Dump Site 41, is slated to be built smack on top of the Alliston aquifer, and if it goes ahead the residents of Tiny Township are worried that this precious resource will be destroyed forever.
A rally outside the Ontario legislature last Friday was part of the ongoing fight to stop Site 41 — a fight that started 30 years ago. The fight continues despite the approval of the landfill by the Ontario government and despite a 16-15 vote in favour of it by the County of Simcoe.
“We don’t need the dump, it’s not necessary, and it’s the worst place you could ever build a dump in the County of Simcoe,” says Stephen Ogden, a member of the Site 41 Community Monitoring Committee.
As part of the Queen’s Park rally, Ogden and Mohawk elder and environmentalist Danny Beaton undertook a five-day 120-kilometre “walk for water” from Tiny Township to Toronto. They want the provincial government to stop the landfill and hope to convince county councillors to overturn their “razor-thin” decision.
Dr. William Shotyk, a geochemistry professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has called water from the Alliston aquifer “the best water on earth.” Shotyk, whose family owns property near Tiny Township, came to that conclusion after testing the water in a sophisticated laboratory he runs at the university to analyze contaminants in prehistoric ice.
There are many shallow aquifers connected to Alliston aquifer, and opponents of the dump fear that a synthetic liner intended to prevent leakage will not be entirely effective, resulting in the contamination of surrounding water. The upward motion of the water is also supposed to help prohibit leakage.
Initially, the proposal for a landfill in that spot was rejected after a 70-day environmental assessment hearing back in 1989. However, the government intervened and through an Order in Council overturned that decision.
