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A southwestern Ontario town is pushing back on the latest step to advance a controversial landfill and waste transfer station project, as Premier Doug Ford’s government ramps up a search for garbage space.
Waste company York1 wants to revive and expand a dormant landfill less than a kilometre from Dresden and pack it over the next decade with enough waste to fill Toronto’s Rogers Centre, despite local opposition.
“It’s a beautiful town, fantastic community, and this is just a few hundred metres north of town,” said Dave Taylor, chief administrative officer for Chatham-Kent, the municipality encompassing Dresden.
“Our council has been unanimously opposed to the project since York1 proposed it.”
The landfill would be mostly soils, such as excavated earth from worksites along with other construction waste, according to the company’s site plans. The proposed transfer station would also sort and clean up construction debris, scrap wood, blue box material and dirt, before sending it to recyclers or landfillers.
Municipal officials have argued the company relied on outdated permits, granted decades ago, to bypass a full environmental assessment. The Ford government, which backtracked last year on a promise to complete that assessment, is now seeking public comment on whether to amend the permits.
“The York1 project is an expansion of an existing facility and can mobilize quickly to expand Ontario’s waste management capacity, as active landfill waste permissions are already in place, and it would not require a new environmental assessment that would take nearly a decade to complete,” Juliana Wilson, spokesperson for Environment Minister Todd McCarthy, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for York1 said “nothing is more important than safety” and encouraged people to take part in the public review.
“Ontario is running short of landfill space, and keeping recyclable materials out of landfill is part of the answer. We think this site can do that safely, and the provincial review is where that gets tested,” their statement read.
The proposal comes as the province prepares to overhaul landfill approvals, and as the minister warns Ontario could hit its capacity in the next 10 years, or sooner if the United States keeps up tariffs on Canadian garbage. Ontario shipped about a quarter of its landfill waste to the United States in 2024, an industry report said.
New omnibus legislation would repeal a municipal veto over new dumps, initially granted by the Ford government in 2020. Under recent regulatory changes, landfills looking to expand their service area or increase how much waste they take no longer need to undergo an environmental assessment, and would instead only be subject to amendments to narrower environmental compliance approvals.
Environmental assessments decide if a landfill project should happen at all, weighing environmental, social and economic impacts together and exploring alternatives. A compliance approval governs how it operates, by setting limits on garbage intake, air pollution or stormwater runoff.
While the Dresden site’s existing approvals are still in place, the municipality says the small landfill has been dormant so long it should be treated as a new project.
Under the proposal, the small landfill dating back to the 1960s, which holds an estimated 40,000 cubic metres of waste, would expand to a maximum capacity of 1.6 million cubic metres, the volume of the Rogers Centre. Up to 3,000 tonnes of waste per day would be accepted and then sorted at the site’s proposed waste transfer station. About 20 two-way truck trips would pass through the site each hour during peak times, a traffic report commissioned by the company suggests.
Locals have balked at the site’s proximity to homes and schools and raised a number of concerns, including about traffic and water impacts. A tributary to the Sydenham River runs along the site.
“We still hold out hope that by us raising those issues that we know are there, that will still factor into the provincial decision as to whether or not to ultimately grant the environmental compliance approvals,” Taylor, the municipality’s CAO, said in an interview this week.
The public comment period on the amended permits is open until Dec. 21. If greenlit, the municipality says the landfill will still be subject to local zoning requirements, after York1 recently dropped a lawsuit where it argued those local approvals should not apply.
The province initially announced in March 2024 it would pursue an environmental assessment for the project, citing community concerns. Shortly after that, the premier called a byelection in the local riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, where the successful Progressive Conservative candidate Steve Pinsonneault campaigned against the expansion.
Then, in a surprise after the election last year, the government cancelled that assessment as part of an omnibus bill. Pinsonneault spoke out against the decision but was absent from the legislature when it was voted on.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2026.
Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press
