By Gordon Lambie
On Wednesday morning Sherbooke’s city council adopted a resolution asking Quebec’s Environment Ministry to permanently extend its moratorium on the dumping of leachate from the Casella landfill in Coventry Vermont into Lake Memphremagog, based on the fact that the lake serves as the source of drinking water for the entire city. The current moratorium was established in 2019 in response to concerns voiced on both sides of the border, but is only set to last until the end of 2023.
According to Mayor Steve Lussier, the renewed concern in the city and surrounding region come as a result of the discovery of elevated levels of PFAS chemicals, linked to the landfill runoff, at the city’s water intake in September and October of 2020.
