'Spontaneous combustion' blamed for fires at Samborski Environmental compost plant

Firefighters in the rural municipality of Macdonald continue to battle a number of fires at Samborski Environmental that they believe were caused by spontaneous combustion.

Reeve Brad Erb said crews have responded to at least four fires at the composting facility near Winnipeg, on Brady Road just south of the Perimeter Highway, in the past 10 days.

"It's been a tough one to get completely extinguished and we've had flareups over the last couple days," Erb told CBC News on Tuesday evening.

He said heat had built up in the composting material and spontaneously combusted a couple weeks ago. Since then fire crews have responded to a number of flash flareups thanks to dry conditions and strong winds.

"It's not like it flares up and there's huge fires as much as there is just smoke, it's like a peat burning almost," said Erb.

He said the main concern is smoke crossing the Perimeter Highway and causing visibility issues for drivers.

"It hasn't because they've been keeping it under control but that's our main focus is maintaining the safety there."

'They are 100% at fault' says Samborski

"If we were working on the property on a daily basis this would have never happened in the first place. They are 100 per cent at fault at this," said Leonard Samborski, owner of Samborski Environmental Ltd.

Samborski has been in a zoning battle with the RM of Macdonald for about a decade over the Brady Road land where his composting facility is located. He said in February council passed a notice of contravention resolution order that Samborski said essentially prevented his family from being on the property. 

"Of course I'm concerned but what can I do?" an exasperated Samborski said. 

The RM has accused Samborski of operating a composting, landscaping and recycling business on land that is not designated for conditional use, which is against the municipal zoning bylaw. Samborski said the land has a designated environmental license and he has not broken any laws.

"Nobody has contacted me about the fires. If Advance [Electronics] had a fire there tonight don't you think the owner of business would be contacted sometime during the night?" asked Samborski.

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He said the fire initially started mid-January in a pile of leaves but he managed to get it under control by mixing snow with the organic material. Samborski said he got a phone call on March 2 alerting him that the fire had reignited. He said when he go to the composting facility he found bylaw officers and the RCMP seizing his property.

"The fires got into the piles and we weren't allowed to manage them as we had been doing prior to the March 2nd raid," said Samborski.

"We had it under control with all the snow we were using, we had everything under control."​

"I think it's just probably an unfortunate circumstance about how this all played out and that's where, kinda where we're at," said Erb.

"Could they have done something? Well they weren't on the property so I don't think they initiated any desire for this to happen. It's just circumstances, I guess, led us to this and if we would have had rain and some wet weather in the forecast and reduced winds this likely wouldn't have been an issue," said Erb.