To whom this may concern, Re…

To whom this may concern,
Re: ECA Application for Millbank Sawmill

I own the property known as 6896 Perth Road 121, Millbank, in the Township of Perth-East, immediately
west of the property subject to the ECA application made on behalf of the Millbank Sawmill.
Due to the impacts from the Millbank Sawmill, myself as well as my family, have been negatively
impacted on our property for the last three years.
• We do not spend family time outside or even take the children out to play safely due to all the
emissions both odor and contaminants in the air.
• We do not have company over for BBQ's or campfires or any outdoor gatherings due to the
impact on our health and property.
• We feel it is not safe for children to play outside with all the emissions and dust etc. on our
property and especially not our baby at just 8 months old.
• There are days when there is no smell or contaminants for a couple hours then the fugitive
dust/contaminants are back and strong with no warning. There is very rarely even half a day
with no emissions affecting us.
• There are also times it is too loud to be outside or have the baby outside and it is also loud in
the house and shops on our property. Primarily these noise factors are when they are cleaning
out bark chips and sawdust and the metal buckets are slamming into the concrete and they are
scraping with metal on concrete. This is done during the day occasionally and more often in the
evening up to approximately 9:30pm
• The debarker you can hear. When the doors are open in the shop/mulch storage you can hear the saws running as well.
• We also experience odor. Today for example they are opening and closing both of the doors
frequently. And within a few minutes of them opening the building doors especially the mulch
storage area the odor gets very strong here and we have to get inside. This happened twice to
my baby and me between 11:00 and 11:45. We were out walking the dog and suddenly the odor
got so strong we had to go inside and when I looked over the doors where open. 20 minutes
later we tried again and were out about 5 min and the same happened again. And you could clearly hear the saw when either door was open.
To expand on the above:

• I am the sole provider for my family and having my health impacted almost daily and being sick
from it is affecting our lives: financially, health wise as well as our mental health as this has been
going on for three years now. Also, my wife cannot be out to help me because of the impacts to
all our health including a baby.
• The air in our yard almost always has an odor and feels dirty. It is hard for adults to breathe let
alone babies and small children. We even have customers talking about it when they come
because they can smell and feel the contaminants in the air on our property. So if people notice
it who are here only a couple minutes how can we safely be outside on our own property and
enjoy outdoor family time with our 8 month old? We have a great property and love to spend
time outside but we feel that we cannot even be outside without experiencing impacts and at
risk of major health issues.
• We cannot have doors open for ventilation or air flow in the shops and we cannot work without
air flow. Which also means we cannot move farm equipment outside or work on it to get it
ready for field work with having breathing issues. Only having a couple days a month is not
realistic to be able to have a livable income or get farm equipment ready for the field. Also, if I
open the doors it affects my workspace due to the contaminated air which gets inside and is
dangerous for my health. This has been going on for three years and it is making me get sicker
and sicker as the time goes on. It has been so bad at different times the emissions get into shops
and sheds which is a huge problem as well.
• When we are in the fields harvesting or getting fields ready and planted. And in the last couple
years as they are growing the sawmill and getting progressively bigger and bigger, the impacts
to everything we do on our property is getting worse. The sawmill is just way to big and close
and the wind blows everything directly onto our property almost all the time. As they are so big
and close it takes a very strong North or East wind to keep our property from being negatively
impacted
• We cannot open windows in the house due to the contamination of fugitive dust. It changes
fast, you can have no smell for a couple hours and suddenly it’s back with no warning, and it’s in
the house before you can get everything tightly closed which means we have no safe space on
our own property. Up until the sawmill started up and started to grow, we had a safe property
and could open windows anytime and enjoy outside time and have people over anytime etc.
• We cannot invite people over for outdoor gatherings because of this ongoing issue. We are
totally dependent on the weather even to play outside with our baby. Spring, summer, and fall
are the worst time for the impacts and any thaws in the winter make it much worse. Now that
the sawmill is so big, we are even impacted with a north or east wind unless it is a very strong
wind.
I work from home and am the sole provider for my family. I farm and have a small secondary farm
business fixing tractors.
The sawmill is directly West of my property, and the prevailing wind is in the West. When the wind is in
the West or Southwest the odors and contaminants are very bad all the time. As the sawmill became
bigger now even when the wind is in the South or Northwest we are impacted most of the time. In the
summer months when it is hot and humid, it does not matter where the wind is from, we are impacted
24/7 from the sawmill operation. For example, the middle of April this year had been bad since
it started to get warm and it does not matter if the sawmill is operating or not with all the wood (raw
logs, debarker chips, mulch, finished lumber etc.) it is all off gassing and being picked up by the wind and
carried over. The sawmill frequently has doors open or partially open when the sawmill is in operation
during the day for hours and last summer it was open for days when it was hot. There have been
numerous nights since January when the overhead door in the mulch and fine dust area of the building
was open all night. The large overhead door was open with lights still on at 9:00pm and still open at
6:00am when we had the dog out and it was shut around 7:30am. Also, quite frequently the same
overhead door is open from approximately 10:00am-7:00pm on Saturdays as well as evenings all winter.
In the Winter months when it is cold and frozen, when the wind is in the North or East it is more
tolerable. But if it gets warm and thaws or rains the wet moldy wood smells are terrible.
From the sawmill to my house it is approximately 786.00 feet and to my small business shop the sawmill
is approximately 702.00 feet away and it does not matter where on my property, we are impacted. To
my closest farm storage shed/shop it is approximately 506.00 feet. I spend a lot of time in this building,
and even with all my doors and windows shut I can hear the noise of the sawmill, and debarker. In my
storage shed the noise is much louder and there is sometimes a vibration when the debarker is running.
We can hear the sawmill and debarker running as well when we are outside. When they are cleaning out
the pit or the debarker pit or all the other messes on the concrete etc. it is very loud as they slam down
the metal loader buckets and scrape metal on concrete. It is really loud outside and it is even loud in the
house and shop. This is a major noise concern, which makes us all very unhappy because outdoor time
and exercise is very import to us all.
I feel the sawmill is too big and too close to my property and the prevailing wind and sawmill buildings
are both directly West which means we are affected most of the time without any other factors.
In the Fall of 2020 we approached the Martins’ (sawmill owners), about our concerns with the
sawdust/odors from their operation; at that time the sawmill was half the size that it is now. The owners
tried a few things such as putting a fence around some mulch and sawdust piles, but it did not reduce
the dust and odor impacts.
In May of 2021 I made a complaint about the impacts to the Township of Perth East, and Township staff
told me to file a complaint with the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. That month I filed
a complaint with the Ministry, though the Martins did not implement the what was indicated by the
Ministry officer who visited the sawmill property. In September of 2021, I hired a Lawyer, Colin Leger,
from Garrod Pickfield LLP to assist us with the impacts from the sawmill.
The Symptoms that I get from the sawmill are shortness of breath, tight on chest, itchy/sore throat, red
itchy eyes, stress and it is greatly impacting my mental health (as my business, my income, my quality of
life and my family’s lives are all negatively impacted for years now) due to this problem.
In the winter when it is cold and frozen the only time I can move my farm tractors or equipment into my
farm shop is when the wind is in the North or East. Any other wind direction if I open the overhead door
to move equipment into my shop then the odors from the sawmill are in my shop and I cannot get away
from it. As soon as spring comes and the weather gets warmer, it does not seem to matter where the
wind direction is from, there is always a bad odor of sawdust, moldy wet wood, and processed lumber
coming across to my property. When it is hot and humid the odor is much worse. I cannot have my shop
door open at all and it gets really hot and hard to function in there when you are trying to work with no
air flow.
I also have a small business that I am trying to run, but it's been very difficult due to the fact I don't feel
good from the emissions of the sawmill, and I am trying to provide for my family.
The log piles and the fresh cut finished lumber off gasses and blows onto my property. The fresh cut
lumber is stored by a fence surrounding the sawmill and that is towards my property.
The debarker is not fully enclosed. To the South West the debarker is wide open and to the North East
there are rubber strips that hang down (I have pictures to show this). There is a pit area under the
debarker and when it gets full the sawmill owners clean it out with a skid steer and dump it on a pile in
their yard. The bark from the debarker also off gasses and I can smell the odors. We have proof of bark
chips, from the debarker, that we found in the snow on our lawn this past January and picked up. We
also have pictures of the chips too fine to pick up that look like waves in the snow.
The sawmill runs 5 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, and often longer than 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM on
Saturdays and on Holidays. Everything off gasses 24/7 and that is also blown over along with any fugitive
dust and wood laying around or drawn out of the buildings and half covered areas. When it rains the
piles outside, the fresh cut lumber, and the logs smell as well. There is no getting away from it on our
property day or night.
For an example how much I am impacted, the week of April 10th-15th 2023, the weather was nice and
warm out 20-25 degrees throughout the week and I should have been working on my farm equipment
for spring work, some of my machinery is too big to fit inside my shop and I need to work on it outside, I
could not do this because of the sawdust / odors blowing onto my property, and to wear a respirator in
that heat and try to work is just too much.
On April the 12th 2023, my pickup truck was sitting outside in front of my farm storage shed for about
30 mins, and when I went to move it, there was fine particles of sawdust all over it. I especially noticed
dust on the windshield, so I cleaned the windshield and left the truck outside for approximately 20
minutes. When I went back, the truck was covered in fine sawdust particles. There was no other source
of contamination, it was sawdust.
This is what we are breathing in on a daily basis, and my wife Cathy and I just had a baby on August 15th
2022.
All last summer the sawmill ran with the doors wide open most of the time. This year, the sawmill
already has its doors open frequently. We documented quite a few times at that the overhead door for
the mulch storage area was open for several hours. For instance:
• Dec 31 2022 door to enclosure open all day,
• Jan 1st 2023, door was open, and they were running the sawmill
• Jan 2nd 2023 door was open overnight and then shut at 12 noon.
• Jan 27 2023 door open at 8 pm.
• Jan 28 2023 door open, 7:30 am,
• Jan 31 2023 door open at 9 pm,
• Feb 4 2023 door open 10 am – 6:40 pm
• Feb 24 2023 door open 7:40 pm,
• Feb 25 2023, door open at 6:30pm
• Mar 21 2023 door open at 6am,
• Mar 23 2023 door open at 8 pm,
• Mar 22 2023 door open 9:30am to 11:30 am and then from 3pm-6pm,
• April 6 2023 door open at 8:30 pm,
• April 15 2023 door open at 6 am was open all night.
• April 21 2023 door open at 6:53 pm
• April 27 2023 door open from 3pm-9 pm,
• April 28 2023 door open at 8am-12noon, 6pm-9pm
Below I have included two photos of sawdust that was found on my pick up truck windshield on April 12, 2023.
Thank you,
Tony Gerber and Cathy Steckly – May 18, 2023