MONO COUNCIL is to be congratulated for backing away from its plan to expropriate an acreage adjacent to its garbage dump in an effort to contain the expanding leachate plume within the boundaries of the licensed site.

Although congratulations are in order, and the decision was not surprising, we find it difficult to understand why Mono would have countenanced expropriation in the first place.

Mono, as some will recall, was host for a series of Headwaters Conferences featuring noted politicians such as David Crombie and a number of groundwater professionals, such as Dr. David Rudolph of the University of Waterloo, in the early 1990s. The themes included "There's always someone downstream," and "No more flush and forget."

The conferences did not deal specifically with landfill sites, but Mr. Rudolph said, "It doesn't take much ... leachate from a landfill to contaminate quite a lot of water."

Those conferences occurred at about the same time as Dufferin was beginning its search for a preferred landfill site. Mono was not in the running for such an undertaking, partly because of its terrain but more importantly because of the nature of its soil.

The final choice was for the East Luther tract, chosen because the site is atop impermeable clay. Even so, the proposed engineered dump would have required a liner, leachate pumps, and possibly methane collection.

Given the background of environmental workshops, and Mono's pride in being headwaters for four river systems and in both the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridge Moraine, it was surprising that the council considered expanding the area of its dump.

The time has come for Mono, Melancthon, Mulmur and Amaranth to look at closing their dumps and getting fully on board with Dufferin's gasification plans, finally ensuring that we aren't contaminating groundwater for the "someone else downstream."