Metro Vancouver says the potential fly ash problem at the Cache Creek landfill might be much larger than initially thought.
1800 tonnes of ash that failed hazardous waste tests was shipped from a Burnaby incinerator in July and August this summer.
Covanta the operator of the incinerator has also failed to submit tests for those two months as required, they arrived months late when Wastech, who run the Cache Creek landfill, demanded they be turned in.
Now Metro solid waste manager Paul Henderson says tests from ash at the landfill, delivered almost two years prior to July, have also failed.
"Wastech sampled in two locations that are from around November 2010 and those intial test results showed leachable cadmium above the threshold for disposable municipal solid waste and so we are working with Wastech and the Ministry of Environment to develop a more extensive sampling program."
Henderson says testing will now broaden to cover 25,000 tonnes of fly ash in the landfill.
"We are just at the very beginning of determining what the sampling program will look like, and the analysis program, to characterize the material and then determine what is the best way to manage that material all the information we have to date shows no impact on human health and the environment related to either the older fly ash or of course the new fly ash from July and August."
Henderson says the weather at Cache Creek might be one cause for high levels of cadmium in the ash.
"Prior to the fly ash being shipped to Cache Creek it was managed at the Coquitlam landfill there we have lots of data that show over time the fly ash became less leachable Cache Creek we don't have that history of data and so we don't know at this point how the fly ash reacts in place at the landfill over time."
Cache Creek Mayor John Ranta says the news catches him by surprise noting there is 25,000 tonnes of fly ash in what is called the mono-fill.
"Golder have taken 238 tests from different grid locations in the monofill so far 22 of those tests have shown leachable cadmium in excess of what is permitted."
Ranta says right off the bat it puts into question all the fly ash testing processes undertaken when the ash is produced at the incinerator.
"It brings into question I guess the process that is applied to the fly ash. What the ministry believes and led us to believe at the time we accepted the fly ash for disposal is that the Westfix process would render the heavy metals in the fly ash inert."
The Ministry of Environment is now investigating after CKNW broke the story about the toxic ash produced by a Burnaby waste to energy incinerator.