Jan 30/08: Metro Vancouver Board Adopts Three-pronged Approach to Reduction and Recycling ...

The clock ran out for Metro Vancouver, in its bid to find an Interior landfill solution for the Lower Mainland’s garbage.

“I can say that the entire board was absolutely frustrated and has been for the past 10 years, at how the goal posts kept changing,” said Langley Township Mayor Kurt Alberts.

“The bottom line is, we’ve been looking at this . . . for 16 years,” said Langley City Councillor and Metro director Gayle Martin.

“It has been a very frustrating process, and I have been there from the beginning,” Martin said Tuesday.

Metro Vancouver (Greater Vancouver Regional District) voted Friday to adopt a three-pronged approach of reduction and recycling; waste to energy; and burying the rest of local waste, either at the Vancouver Landfill adjacent to Burns Bog, or at a Washington State’s privately-owned Rabanco landfill site.

Alberts, a director on the regional district board, said Metro Vancouver had undertaken all the required environmental processes, only to learn that the province wanted them to go back and take another look.

The process was further complicated by the provincial requirement that any landfill needed First Nations endorsement, even when on privately-owned land.

Alberts said the Ashcroft Ranch property had been purchased before the province decided First Nations landfill approval would be required on private property.

Failure to get a resolution, either on Cache Creek expansion or the Ashcroft property, resulted in the board decision Friday, he said.

Alberts said there was a move to delay the decision another 60 days.

That didn’t pass because many of the directors around the table had been involved with the province for the past 10 years, and felt another 60 days could achieve no resolution, Alberts said.

Martin said that she was surprised by an Ashcroft First Nation chief’s statement that his band had never been consulted, but had no objection to the ranch land landfill.

And she was surprised that Chief Robert Pasco of the Nlaka’pamux Tribal Council said First Nations still want to negotiate an Interior landfill.

She said Pasco had been on record in the past as positively opposed to any Lower Mainland garbage landfill sites in the Interior.

Both Martin and Alberts said time had run out, and it was felt imperative to give Metro staff a directive to start working on an alternate solution.

“We were supposed to have a replacement site (for the Cache Creek landfill) by the end of this year,” Martin said.

And the Cache Creek site will be full in 2010.

While Logan Lake has also made a bid to accommodate Metro garbage at an old mine, that too would also require First Nations endorsement.

With a large number of First Nations opposed to landfills in the interior, the regional board felt no consensus was possible in time to meet the looming garbage crunch of 2010.

The Metro Vancouver board asked staff to look at large-scale diversion through recycling and composting; waste-to-energy plants that will burn garbage to generate electrical power, and dumping either at the Vancouver landfill or at Rabanco.

Alberts said that while there are challenges to burning waste for energy, there are examples of clean-burning plants in other parts of the world.

“From what I can understand, the technology is top-notch,” said Martin.

She said even the ash is burned in modern incinerators.

Martin said while shipping Lower Mainland garbage to Washington State may not be politically correct, it may be the best solution.

One positive aspect of the Rabanco option is that the garbage would be shipped by rail, not truck, she said.