City refuses to reveal contingency plan amid landfill blockade

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This article was published 21/12/2022 (689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city has enacted contingency plans for garbage and recycling collection while the Brady Road landfill is blocked by activists who want a search for human remains.

The landfill and 4R depot have been closed since Sunday afternoon, when a group of activists for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people set up a blockade and a camp at the site on Winnipeg’s southern limits.

In a news release Thursday, the city informed the public it is trying to avoid disruption to garbage and recycling collection while Brady Road is closed.

The city refused to disclose details of its contingency plans, citing security reasons.

Calls for searches of Brady Road and the privately owned Prairie Green Landfill have escalated since police announced Dec. 1 that Jeremy Skibicki, 35, was accused of slaying four Indigenous women.

Skibicki was charged with first-degree murder in May after Rebecca Contois’s partial remains were found in a garbage bin in North Kildonan.

Additional remains belonging to the 24-year-old were found in June while police searched the Brady Road landfill.

Earlier this month, police charged Skibicki with three additional counts in the slayings of Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and an unidentified woman who’s been named Buffalo Woman by Indigenous elders.

Police believe the remains of Harris and Myran were deposited at Prairie Green, just north of Winnipeg, in mid-May.

Harris’s cousin, Melissa Normand, told the Free Press this week she believes Harris’s remains are in the same area of Brady Road that was searched by police in June.

She said the city has stopped dumping waste in the area, known as a cell, where Contois’s partial remains were discovered.

The city confirmed that information Thursday, saying the cell has been sealed.

Staff began using a new cell in an active area of the site in July.

Normand said city officials have agreed to escort Harris’s family members into the site Friday for a closer view and a traditional ceremony involving prayers.

In addition to a search of the landfill, the MMIWG2S+ activists at the blockade want the city to stop dumping waste in existing areas.

They say new refuse should be disposed of on unused land at the sprawling site, which is Winnipeg’s only active landfill.

However, the city appeared to rule that out Thursday, saying it takes about two years to build and prepare a new cell for dumping.

Before construction of a new cell can begin, engineering plans must be approved by the province.

The city said a cell is a regulated area that begins as a constructed pit, where waste is placed, packed and stored.

When a cell reaches capacity, it is capped with a metre of compacted clay and a topsoil layer of vegetation.

It takes about two years for a cell to fill up, the city said.

Prairie Green’s owner, Waste Connections of Canada, said it has suspended operations while an Indigenous-led committee studies the feasibility of landfill searches.

After learning in mid-June that Harris and Myran’s remains may have been deposited there 34 days earlier, police decided a search wasn’t feasible, in part, due to the tonnes of waste dumped during that time.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching