Trial begins as city tries to recoup $72K in dumping fees from Samborski Environmental

A senior manager with the city's water and waste department testified Monday that Samborski Environmental failed to pay more than $72,000 in dumping fees dating back eight years, but the company director says he was under the impression the city would let them dump for free.

Randal Park, acting manager of the city's solid waste services division, testified that Samborski Environmental owes the City of Winnipeg for numerous loads of organic waste it dropped off at the Brady Landfill from September 2010 to June 2011.

The city sued Samborski Environmental in January 2017, alleging the company had paid just under $24,000 of its roughly $97,000 dumping tab.

Director Leonard Samborski said the company made initial payments despite being caught off guard by the charges in the fall of 2010.

"We were shocked we were getting these payments because it wasn't what was agreed upon," he told Justice Lori Spivak while testifying.

He said the company didn't want to sour a potential lease agreement with the city — which never solidified — that would allow them to relocate their composting operation onto the Brady Landfill site.

Lawyer Kalyn Bomback, who is representing the city, read out a transcript from a previous interview where Samborski ​agreed his son Paul Samborski, who also works for the company, would've received the bills each month between September 2010 and June 2011.

Dumping agreement

Bomback had Park revisit composting and dumping agreements struck between the city and Saborski Environmental, then Samborski Garden Supplies Ltd., beginning in June and July of 2010.

Park said that's when the city entered into an agreement with Samborski, at the request of the Manitoba government, to compost some of the company's organic materials — namely food waste.

Samborski has been collecting such waste from local businesses for several years, including from Costco, Bell-MTS Centre, Polo Park, grocery stores, schools and several restaurants.

The city began taking Samborski's organic waste in August 2010 and tried to incorporate the material into its existing composting program, which at that time exclusively focused on processing yard waste at a site on the Brady Landfill grounds, said Park. The city did not charge fees for dumping yard waste.

Soon it became clear the Samborski waste was too soggy to be effectively mixed into and broken down with the leafy materials, grass and branches, Park said.

"The material was just too wet and it had a number of contaminants in it, so we decided we couldn't process it," Park said. "It was too disruptive for our site."

Samborski said that was never brought to his attention.

"No one from the city told us that they couldn't compost food," he said.

Samborski's lawyer Gene Zazelenchuk asked Park what kind of contaminants, if any, there were in the organic loads, and how he knew for certain they existed. Park said he was told about the problem by another manager and was unable to expand further.

New agreement

Zazelenchuk and Samborski said Samborski Environmental did not dump any loads at the Brady Landfill before Sept. 10 — that started on Sept. 13, they say — but Park disagreed.

Park said the city lacked the expertise and infrastructure to compost the food scraps, and on Sept. 10, 2010, signed a new agreement. Paul Samborski signed it on behalf of the company, court heard.

That agreement was based on the understanding that the city was unable to compost Samborski's organics, so the waste would instead be dumped and buried in the landfill with the rest of the city's residential and commercial solid waste, said Park.

The company opened an account at the landfill, and its loads were classified as "compostable" despite not being composted by the city.

Samborski said the company was under the impression that, though the city rejected a request to let Samborski employees tend to the compost heap at the landfill site, it would nonetheless be managed by city employees. He said that didn't happen, and the company was unable to recover its valuable compost from the landfill.

"I had a gun to my head, I had to do this," Leonard Samborski said, referring to pressure he says he received from provincial employee Dan McInnis to sign. "He said do this."

Calling the loads "compostable" was in this case an exception made for administrative purposes so Samborski wouldn't be charged a $10-per-tonne provincial surcharge that was waved under the agreement, Park said.

The agreement stipulated the company would have to pay for the loads and settle up monthly, Park said, and at no point suggested the materials would be composted.

But Leonard Samborski disagreed those were the terms of the agreement. He said the city agreed to not charge Samborski for daily dumps and only wanted to keep track of load weights. 

"That was the only explanation they gave us," he said. "They wanted to see what was coming in there on a daily basis."

Complaints from Whyte Ridge

Samborski Environmental describes itself as a retailer and creator of high-grade organic materials, and Leonard Samborski has been 

Whyte Ridge residents complained about foul odours they said were emanating from Samborski's lot east of the residential community in 2010.

Later that year, the province ordered Samborski to end its composting, in part due to the hundreds of complaints it received about the odour and a lack of an environmental licence.

In 2012, the province again ordered Samborski to cease its operations, and in 2013 ordered the company to relocate.

In 2014, after an environmental review, the province deemed the company's compost a pollutant. Samborski appealed but the courts upheld the provincial finding and ordered the company to move.

In 2013, the province and Samborski agreed on a new location for the company near Winkler. The Samborski website says it instead moved its operation a few kilometres south of its previous site near the Brady Landfill.

The province found Samborski had failed to adequately move its operations in 2015 and hired contractors to move the organic material away.

The province planned to charge Samborski for the move, and the company turned around and sued for $24,000 in losses it says it absorbed after contractors took 600 cubic metres of its compost away.

Spivak is expected to hear more testimony Wednesday.