Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 08/03) - The city's director of public works had no idea Stanton Regional Hospital has been dumping potentially toxic material into the landfill.

Word of Stanton's bottom ash disposal practices came as a surprise to the city's director of public works, Greg Kehoe.

"Let's put it this way, I didn't know how they were disposing of their hazardous waste at the hospital. We weren't aware ... this is interesting stuff," he said.

Currently there is no way of knowing what is being dumped into the landfill if city officials aren't told, and that worries Kehoe.

"With (commercial or industrial companies) who identify it, we know it's there ... but people can sneak in any kind of materials into the landfill that they're not supposed to," he said.

Kehoe said last week he planned to discuss Stanton's biomedical waste disposal practices with the Environmental Protection Service "to find out what is going on.

"We'll have to find out more," he said.

As of Wednesday, Emery Paquin, director of EPS, said Kehoe had made no attempt to contact him.

But this week, EPS and Stanton will be taking samples of the bottom ash for analysis to determine whether it meets territorial industrial waste guidelines.

"At that point a determination will be made as to whether (Stanton) can continue to put it into the local landfill," said Paquin.