Regional Feature Focus on waste management practices as Cache Creek d By DAN KEETON The crows wheel around the layer of green garbage bags and scattered refuse as the late afternoon sun casts an amber glow over the otherwise picturesque valley in which the village of Cache Creek nestles. Perched with seeming precariousness on the edge of the mountain, the high-level elevation dump, although small at present, already exudes the odours typical of con- ventional landfills. And in a very real way, that growing mound of garbage from Greater Vancouver is destined to spill over the cliff and create a mountain of refuse, just as it has already engulfed the village and the province in a mountain of political controv- ersy. “The process used to put this into place was totally flawed and anti-democratic,” charges John McNamer, a rancher at Loon Lake and a leading member of the anti- dump coalition, Cache Creek Area Resi- dents United. “This issue will come back to haunt those people in a decision making capacity.” The trucking of the regional district’s garbage to the near Interior has torn apart a community, affronted local Native bands who have land claims on the dumpsite, threatened the region’s precious water supp- lies and has already contributed, residents fighting the dumpsite say, to the defeat of a Socred candidate. And the dump has spurred the growing environmental move- ment in the Interior and the Lower Main- land, and raised serious questions about how governments handle the garbage issue. Residents have ee fought the dump for the past year with phone-in campaigns to the premier’s of- fice and have at- § tempted to appeal to a variety of offi- { cials to enact a moratoroium, and conduct public ref- ' erendums and inde- ae pendent environ- McNAMER mental studies on a project they warn threatens the region’s water supply. They note that the dump was never sub- jected to a vote by the area’s residents, and that the deals establishing it were struck in secret. Chuck and Sherrie Dougherty have fought the dump for the past year, and were instrumental in a previous successful battle to prevent the location of toxic waste incin- erator near the community. “Some have said we were foolish to fight the incinerator since they never planned to put it in anyway and it just distracted atten- tion from the dump. But it was not a wasted effort since we would have had both, if we hadn’t fought it,” Sherrie Dougherty says. Chuck Dougherty, the village’s assistant fire chief, says the dump’s defenders point to the 60 jobs they claim will be lost if the dump is cancelled because the nearby wood chip plant, with which it has a curious rela- tionship, pulls up stakes. ““That’s simply not true,” he insists. Wastech sold the proposal to local authorities on the premise that Georgia Pacific, a U.S. firm, would locate a wood chip plant in the community. Wastech’s trucks haul garbage from Greater Van- couver to the site, and on the return trip the trucks take wood chips to Georgia Pacific’s pulp mill in Bellingham, Wash. Coalition member Mendel Rubinson says the group doesn’t even touch the ques- — tion of the jobs lost through the export of chips that could be processed locally, since it detracts from the immediate question of fighting the dump. 2 e Pacific Tribune, October 2, 1989 Tractor moves garbage at Wastech dumpsite overlooking Cache Creek; (right) Dump opponents Sherrie and Chuck Dougherty (with children Sharmaine and Billy) ump fight Continues _ are labelled as ‘‘known dissidents’’ who cannot enter dumpsite without an escort. But the symbiotic relationship between Wastech and Georgia Pacific is already affecting the community negatively, Sherrie Dougherty points out. Water stored in a new tank is used to wash out the trucks for the Bellingham trip, seriously depleting the supply for the local residents. And the dump is creating a visible envir- onmental eyesore. “On a windy day you'll see young people running along the (Trans- Canada) highway with bags to catch the stuff blowing off the mountain,” she relates. But what is more alarming are the plans to expand the landfill to create a virtual mountain of refuse on the hillside just out- side the boundary line of the village and right next to the Trans-Canada highway. Gary Vanstone, a member of the Bona- parte Band which has claims on the Crown land that houses the dump, points to plans for the expansion over a 20-year period. The garbage will be placed over two types of liners as the dump becomes a mountain moving towards the Cache Creek boundary line, he relates. The Bonaparte Band, and the neighbour- ing Ashcroft Band, oppose the landfill since it violates land claims and threatens to leak “toxins into the Bonaparte River which runs through their territories. It is located on historic burial grounds. And town residents decry the process whereby the project was given the green light by the village council, the GVRD, and ultimately the provincial Environment Min- istry without any input from the public. They conducted two door-to-door peti- tions — one in 1987, and the second early last spring — both of which found 67 per cent of those polled firmly opposed to the dump. Sherrie Dougherty says she and others had four days — from March 28 to April 3 — to visit 346 households before an upcoming council meeting. Of those, 257 signed the petition, with 177 opposing the dump and 66 favouring it while 20 were undecided. The Doughertys and their colleagues © took that petition to the village council in April to back their demands for a morato- rium on the dump and a referendum on the issue. The five-member council, all suppor- ters of the landfill, refused despite the obvious community demand for a demo- cratic process. Chuck and Sherrie can’t help but feel betrayed by the outcome, since they had worked on the election campaign of Mayor Ben Roy, then a dump opponent who now defends it. Chuck Dougherty told council that night: “I, along with many other peo- ple, worked very hard to get (former mayor) Jim Smith replaced and Mayor Ben Roy elected because we were led to believe that Mr. Roy would fight this dump, introduce democracy into the process and allow the people of this village to have a vote on the matter.... A majority of people sitting on this council here tonight were elected witha mandate to fight this dump and have not honoured that mandate.” John McNamer, a former Montana rancher who now owns a spread at the small community of Loon Lake, says the dump issue “is rapidly spreading from a local to a regional, to a province-wide issue.” McNamer says the proof is in the results of the Cariboo byelection, in which voters overwhelmingly elected a New Democrat and ended 14 years of unbroken Socred representation. The riding does not include the Cache Creek area, but McNamer, who spoke at several all-candidates meetings, points out that Socred Joe Wark was the only one of five candidates who did not meet with the anti-dump forces and did not take a position against the dump. The campaign has had its effect. Although Environment Minister Bruce Strachan later tried to minimize it, Premier Bill Vander Zalm was telling dump oppo- nents and the Kamloops Daily News that he was opposed to the dump and was promis- ing a cabinet meeting on the question by the end of October. Whether the premier, famous for his shoot-from-the-lip remarks, ever delivers is moot. But the campaign “has clearly dem- onstrated that this issue has political ramifi- cations, and it points to an abdication of responsibility by the Socred government and the GVRD,” McNamer charges. The regional district board has received Mayor Ben Roy who extols the landfill. But it has refused, after almost two months of requests, to hear a delegation from the Cache Creek residents, McNamer says. The Cache Creek campaign has been complemented by efforts from several Lower Mainland environmentalists. An organization called the Citizens Action Network has campaigned since last Novem- ber for a new approach to handling Greater Vancouver’s garbage, and has called into question waste disposal facilities like the Burnaby incinerator, the Coquitlam ash dump and Refuse Derived Fuel plant, the 445 Cache Creek dump and the lack of a recy- cling plan for the region. McNamer has had experience in com- munity activism before. In 1982, he was part of an effort that got the question of locating MX missiles in Montana on the ballot in the Congressional elections that year. Voters rejected the missiles, along with the devel- opment of nuclear weapons by any government, by 57 per cent, defeating plans by the Reagan administration to locate the missiles in the western state that borders B.C. and Alberta. “It was a truly grassroots effort, and it’s the same with the garbage issue. A way of life is seriously threatened,” he asserts. The anti-dump movement has been rebuffed in efforts to have the issue exam- ined by the provincial Ombudsman and to get Strachan to withdraw the permit allow- ing the dump (that had been issued before an environmental impact study commissioned by Wastech was completed). But the campaign continues, most recently with a protest at the GVRD offices in Burnaby and plans to conduct a daily information distribution outside the offices. “T think we’ve had the staying power because there’s a tremendous amount of support out there,” McNamer says. “The effort has spread far and wide in all directions,” Sherrie Dougherty affirms. Says Chuck Dougherty, a fourth- generation Cache Creek resident: “It’s groups like ours continually harping at them that will make the difference. I’m cau- tiously optimistic we'll be successful.”