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KINGSTON Kingston City Councillors are being warned to do a lot more homework before embarking on a questionable scheme to privatize garbage and recycling.

With the Citys Environment & Transportation Committee scheduled to meet tomorrow (October 19) to review the bids from eight private companies, the Kingston Coalition Against Privatization (KCAP) wants council to defer any decision until after the November 13 elections.

Heres some of what councillors and the mayor need to know:

  • One of the main bidders, Canadian Waste Services (CWS), is a subsidiary of the American giant Waste Management International (WMI) of Houston, Texas. WMI is the continents largest waste conglomerate/holding company, and is well known amongst waste industry analysts for its unscrupulous environmental and business practices

  • In June of this year (2000), WMI was charged with fraud by the U.S. Security Exchange Commission for misrepresenting and artificially inflating the value of its stock. Senior company executives cashed-out millions of dollars in stock before revised financial information was made public and the stock plummeted.

  • In October, 1998 WMI and three related companies were indicted in California on 23 counts of criminal fraud. The charges stemmed from another WMI rail-haul scheme (like Torontos Adams Mine) that would have moved trash from Californias Orange and San Diego counties to a landfill in the Mojave Desert.

  • In a national price fixing class action against WMI, the plaintiffs showed that the company (in collaboration with the second largest waste company on the continent, Browning Ferris Industries, BFI) had developed a sophisticated accounting program to engage in predatory, monopolistic pricing in many different locations.

  • Canadian Waste Services is the same company that plans to dump Torontos garbage in an abandoned mine near Kirkland Lake.

Kingston city council is scheduled to make a decision on the future of waste management for the City of Kingston at its regular meeting on October 24th the last meeting before the elections.

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For information:
Karl Flecker, CAP Co-Chair
(613) 549-1843(h)
Cheryl McArthur, CAP Co-Chair
CUPE Local 109
(613) 544-2291 (o)
John McCracken, CUPE Communications Rep.
(416) 292-3999 (o)

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