The Mystery of Melville Park

Paul de Buono unearths a 2000 environmental study that was never made public

This tale began last week, when Vaughan City Councillors and some journalists (at Tandem, Toronto Star, and Vaughan Citizen) received an e-mail from Paul De Buono, the founder of vaughanwatch.ca, a website that proclaims its dedication to watching what goes on at City Hall in the 'City Above Toronto'.
In his e-mail, De Buono mentions a report titled Methane Monitoring - Melville Park about a study investigating a possible ground contamination in a small city park just north of Major MacKenzie and on the nearby Michael Cranny Elementary School Divine Mercy Catholic Elementary School.
The tone of the message was alarming: Paul De Buono asked to see the report, compiled three years ago but never published, in compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. The subject, wrote De Buono, "goes to the very heart of whether the City, when it had the opportunity to do so, was serious in protecting residents from potential dangers the City was made aware of."
"If maximum transparency is a real Council objective," continued De Buono, "this Report will be released within 30 days of the request. [...] The 30-day freedom of information window means that the December 8 Committee of the Whole and the December 15 Council are the only opportunities for you to deal with the request if you [the Councillors] individually wish Council to become involved in releasing the Report."
The story, as referred by De Buono, began in 1997, when "a consultant found clay, silt and traces of reddish, green and brown fill emitting a slight petroleum odour in an area or areas of Melville Park. The City of Vaughan had the soil removed from the park."
Local residents in the year 2000, following media stories in June 2000 which drew attention to the above, wanted further testing of the area to be sure that there was nothing contaminated buried in the large community property consisting of Melville Park and the properties immediately south and north of Melville Park where the two schools are.
"The City of Vaughan was responsible for an environmental study subsequent to the June 2000 media stories. The study determined that a few homes were potentially at risk due to methane. The few homes back onto the northeast corner of the Michael Cranny Elementary School grounds. Their basements were monitored for methane and were linked with Vaughan's Fire and Rescue Service Department. The methane was publicly attributed to a previous land use, where a farm had concentrated pig manure in that area."
However, the report was kept confidential in its entirety.
De Buono writes that several people (at least three, according to a subsequent telephone conversation between a Tandem reporter and De Buono) would have noticed the 1997 dumping in the north-central part of what is today the yard of Michael Cranny Elementary School. According to De Buono, "The dumping is described as approximately 20 trucks or so. The soil is described as reddish. The reddish soil was dumped so deep that the trucks could not be seen once they descended into the pit. This suggests a well organized and planned dumping activity. The dumping occurred near the north-central school grounds and not along the perimeter of the school grounds abutting residential properties."
When the environmental study was underway in 2000, reads the e-mail, "a witness who saw the study being conducted noted that they were not focusing on the area where he had seen the substantial amount of dumping, which is the north-central grounds of Michael Cranny Elementary School," but along the perimetre.
The letter continues remarking that, "while the City has not offered anything publicly to suggest the contrary, it seems that the City tested the perimeter of the Michael Cranny Elementary School grounds but seems not to have focused on the specific area were the dumping occurred deep underneath the north-central part of the school grounds as it abuts Melville Park."
These are the reasons why De Buono asked for access to the report, under the Freedom of Information Act.
Last week, reporters from Tandem visited Michael Cranny Elementary School, learning from vice principal Nancy Chambers that the school has not received any letters, phone calls, or other communications from the parents of its 600 students or other local residents concerning the dumping of reddish stuff in that area of today's schoolyard.
When asked by Tandem, Paul De Buono declined to reveal the names of the people who allegedly witnessed the dumping. De Buono gave the same reply to Ward 1 City Councillor Peter Meffe, in whose riding the school is located.
Meffe returned as a City Councillor following several years of 'pause' in his political career, yet he clearly remembers that the development of that area was one of his first battles both as representative of a taxpayers association and in his first term as a councillor.
"Up to the Nineties," told Meffe, "the land between Jane and Keele, from the limits of Maple almost to Teston Road, was occupied by Suregane Farm, an important agricultural and breeding operation owned by Canada Packers. When the first houses were built in the area, company managers got actively involved in the community. For instance, the first Maple Fest ever was held around the farm pond."
"The farm bred chickens, cattle, and pigs, whose refuse were washed from the stalls and stored in tanks, to be later used as fertilizer for the agricultural land. In order to prevent bad smells from escaping, they used a special machine that injected manure some 20 centimetres below the ground."
Meffe deems the explanation of the presence of methane highly plausible, as the manure storage tanks were located on that spot and methane is generated by organic putrefaction."
"I spoke at length with Mr. De Buono," said councillor Meffe, "and I explained him that, in my capacity as Ward 1 councillor, I've asked department managers to hand me a copy of the report."
At the time of the study, the person in charge of these activities for the City was Doris Haas; she does not work for the City anymore. Neither councillor Meffe nor his predecessor Mario Ferri recall being notified in recent years of a dumping activity as large as that described by Paul De Buono's alleged witnesses.
"If the pit was deep enough for trucks to disappear into it," said Meffe, "it must have been at least four metres deep, and longer than the trucks; moreover, heavy trucks coming and going would have travelled a rather long road. At the time, I was in the area almost every day, precisely to check on the progress of works as representative of that community, and I never noticed anything on that scale."
Meffe also wonders why the witnesses mentioned by De Buono never called their city councillor, and why only very few people, according to De Buono, noticed this large-scale dumping that left no trace in official documents.
"I will gladly check the results of the 2000 environmental study," concludes Meffe, "but certainly I won't ask the City to spend $15,000 or $20,000 in taxpayers' money to repeat tests on the basis of one or two witnesses unwilling to come forward in person."

Publication Date: 2003-12-14
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3449