Save Lincolnville Campaign is a campaign to stop another Africville. It is a community-led initiative for the removal of the landfill located within a kilometre of the community of Lincolnville; a fight for environmental justice; and part of a growing movement to oppose the racist attack on African Nova Scotian and First Nation people in this province.
__Photo Gallery!
NEWS:
Lincolnville residents accuse municipality of environmental racism
By CHRIS LAMBIE Staff Reporter
The Chronicle Herald - (article here)
Wed. Feb 13, 2008
Isaac Sanley, standing, flanked by Wendy Campbell, Satwy Raymond
and James Desmond, chairs a meeting on enviromental racism at the
North Branch Library in Halifax on Tuesday. Residents of Lincolnville say
if they were white, they wouldn’t have to battle so hard against a landfill
situated near their community. (Peter Parsons / Staff)
They believe that if they were white, things would be different.
Residents from the predominantly black community of Lincolnville in Guysborough County levelled charges of environmental racism at their municipal politicians Tuesday night at the North Branch Library in Halifax. They are concerned about how the landfill next to their small community of less than 60 people affects their health.
"In the past 12 years, people have been dying off by the numbers," said Wendy Campbell, who lives in Lincolnville.
"We expect our elders to go, but when we start seeing our young dying, that really plays with everyone."
Stomach cancer seems to be killing people from the community at an unusually high rate, James Desmond, another Lincolnville resident, said at an African Heritage Month event.
"My brother worked at the landfill site as a summer student. Five years ago, he was diagnosed with a tumour on the brain. The guy that worked with him died from cancer. Their second site supervisor had to quit because he had cancer of the lymph nodes. So is the landfill site causing problems? I would say yes," said Mr. Desmond, who had a tumour removed from his own hand.
The landfill accepts waste from 17 municipalities.
"On any given day, there can be 25 to 35 trucks going to that landfill site," Mr. Desmond said. The dump opened in early 2006 to meet stricter provincial laws.
"At the end of 25 years, it will be a whole city block (of trash) 24 storeys high," Ms. Campbell said. The existing landfill replaced a previous dump that was also next to Lincolnville.
"We need people to say this isn’t right," Ms. Campbell said. "I don’t want Lincolnville to be another Africville."
Workers razed the Halifax neighbourhood of Africville in the 1960s in the name of urban renewal. A group called Concerned Citizens of Lincolnville will hold a rally against the dump this Saturday. It starts at the Lincolnville Community Centre at 10 a.m.
"We’re not going to stand for the environmental racism that the Municipality of Guysborough continues to apply against the community of Lincolnville," Mr. Desmond said.
"It’s so important for anyone who has a passion for what we’re doing to come out to support us," Ms. Campbell said. The first landfill beside Lincolnville opened in the 1970s after a blaze at a dump near Sunnyville, another black community in Guysborough, prompted the municipality to choose a new location.
"Until 2006, this was just a hole in the ground," Ms. Campbell said. "Everything was dumped into it."
She believes that waste from the cleanup of the Liberian tanker Arrow was dumped at the first landfill near Lincolnville. The Arrow sank in Ched-abucto Bay in February 1970, spilling 8,000 tonnes of bunker C oil into the ocean.
"I worked on that cleanup back in the ’70s and, yes, some of that sludge went to the dump outside of the community of Lincolnville," Ms. Campbell said.
"I’ve seen dead horses, I’ve seen dead carcasses, I’ve seen a little bit of everything going in and around that dump." Mr. Desmond remembers seeing transformers off power poles dumped into the original landfill.
"They carried, at that time, PCBs," he said. "There was open pit burning on a regular basis for years."
Workers used to pour diesel fuel over the garbage, set it on fire and it burned for days, with "toxic smoke blowing through the air, blowing through our community," Mr. Desmond said. "The municipality said, ‘Nothing to worry about. We’re keeping an eye on things. No big deal.’ "
The Lincolnville activists say they’ve tried contacting Premier Rodney MacDonald, Environment Minister Mark Parent and African-Nova Scotian Affairs Minister Barry Barnet, looking for help addressing their concerns.
"It sure seems like a conspiracy because nobody is answering our calls," Ms. Campbell said.
(clambie@herald.ca)
top
Media Advisory
June 4, 2007
Guysborough – On Wednesday afternoon, residents from the African Nova Scotian communities of Upper Big Tracadie, Lincolnville, and congregated on the grounds of the Lincolnville Community Centre for a barbecue and public protest against a planned Municipal Council meeting at the centre. An RCMP official was stationed at the centre and at 6pm, the Municipal council was called in to back out of their meeting. Council employee Gary Cleary was the first to arrive at the meeting and was refused entry to the centre by the community-members who converged at the front entrance singing spirituals and chanting in unison.
 At the heels of a Municipal Council meeting where demands were made by Lincolnville residents to Guysborough councilors regarding a second-generation landfill situated in close proximity to the community, the Guysborough Municipal Council decided to hold a meeting at the Lincolnville community center; this, despite pressure from the community to change the date and consult the community before holding a meeting at their center.
At a May 8th Council meeting, residents and supporters disturbed the Council meeting after councilors and Warden Lloyd Hines refused to negotiate on any of the demands set out by Lincolnville residents. These demands included the immediate resignation of a council member, striking of an ad hoc committee, and an injunction of the landfill. In response to this community action, a series of letters were sent by Council to Lincolnville residents informing them that none of their demands would be met or compromised on, and that Council has planned for a special meeting to take place at the community center on June 6th, at 7pm.
Lincolnville resident Wendy Campbell feels that this is the most recent slight against the community. "We shut it down" Campbell said. "Residents have been denied the use of the community center at least twice by political officials," Campbell says. "It is shameful and insulting that the Municipality have now decided to host a meeting of their own there without consulting the community; this on top of abdicating their responsibility to address their constituents' demands and denying us of a public apology for their racist display on April 11th."
The daughter of Freeman Izzard, Denise Allen, explains fairness to the people of Lincolnville in this way. "The people of Lincolnville deserve no less than what the people of Sacville recieved in terms of compensation. First, the landfill that was located in Sackville was located further away than the landfill in Lincolnville, yet, the residents of Sackville recieved financial compensation for the environmental degredation it causeed property owners and all other residents of Sackville. Furthermore, the Sackville Act was enacted to safeguard the health and well being of the residents and property owners and to guarantee that a landfill wouldl never be placed near or around their communities or homes again."
James Desmond, another resident of Lincolnville, says he isn't surprised by this recent course of action. "The municipality has shown nothing but contempt for the will of the residents. This has been evident through their refusal to address our collective demands, attend our community meetings, or their continual passing of unilateral decisions which greatly affect our lives."
"If its not racism" Allen explains, "then why aren't the people of Lincolnville treated the same? The people of Lincolville deserve all of their demands met, that would be justice!"
top
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
CBC News
Some residents of a mainly black community in Nova Scotia say racism is behind a decision to create a superdump in their backyard. The garbage dump outside Lincolnville, in Guysborough County, is being expanded to take in waste from 17 communities on the mainland and Cape Breton. To Raymond Sheppard, the plan will only hurt Lincolnville.
"If things keep going the way they are I would make a prediction that five, if not 10 years down the road, the community will not exist," he said.
Sheppard said he believes Lincolnville was chosen as a dumpsite 32 years ago because the community is predominantly black. As a member of the Concerned Citizens of Lincolnville, he hopes to convince the municipality to move the landfill. But Lloyd Hines, warden of the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, said no one spoke out when the new garbage plan was discussed at public meetings.
"This particular location has operated very successfully and very responsibly without a word of resistance," Hines said.
Nova Scotia requires all municipalities to dispose of waste in special landfills that have liners to prevent runoff, designed to protect the surrounding environment.Sheppard said Nova Scotia has a history of placing incinerators, waste sites and landfills next to black and native communities.
top |
