Parks Canada staff supervise the remediation of an old landfill in Gros Morne National Park earlier this week. (Colleen Connors/CBC) Gros Morne's trash is becoming the town of Hawke's Bay's trouble — and the mayor, Lloyd Bennett, feels blindsided. This week, truckloads of waste began leaving a 1970s landfill site at Martin Point in Gros Morne National Park, destined to be dumped at the landfill in Hawke's Bay.
But Bennett says the town wasn't told it was going to happen. "Nobody knew anything about this. This was like a clandestine type operation," Bennett said.
Bennett said Parks Canada, which operates Gros Morne park, and NorPen Regional Waste Management, which is carrying out the job, told the town nothing. A statement from the Nor Pen Regional Service Board says the job was approved by Service N.L.
According to Digital Government and Service N.L. spokesperson Gina MacArthur, the provincial department issued a permit for the transfer of the waste when it was contacted by an environmental consulting firm hired by Parks Canada.
50-year-old dump The Gros Morne site at Martin Point was an easily accessible spot for residents in neighbouring communities in the 1970s to dump garbage. Removing the former dump is part of a federal project to clean up contaminated sites at risk to human health or the environment. Parks Canada guts a 50-year-old dump in Gros Morne Work at Martin Point has been ongoing for around five years.
It was unclear initially where the landfill was located �.