Jan 26/08: Metro Vancouver Turns It's Eyes To Delta Landfill ...

More garbage is headed to the Vancouver Landfill in Burns Bog in the coming years.

The Metro Vancouver board approved a recommendation yesterday that the Delta landfill, in addition to one in Washington state, become the primary regional disposal sites.

The plan was prompted after the regional district finally gave up trying to develop a landfill on a ranch it owned in Ashcroft. Natives in that area resisted the Metro Vancouver plan that had been in the works for over a decade.


With the regional district's other main landfill in Cache Creek about to reach capacity by 2010, it left the district scrambling to find an alternate site to get rid of all the trash. Cache Creek handles 500,000 tonnes per year, which works out to about one-third of Metro Vancouver's total waste.

The new plan would see the landfill in Delta take on additional garbage between 2010 and 2015. By 2015, the extra trash would be diverted to new incinerators.

Fred Nenninger, Metro Vancouver's regional utility planning manager, said currently there's only one Lower Mainland incinerator, which is located in Burnaby. It has the double benefit of not only burning garbage but also producing electricity for 15,000 homes.

He noted once the additional waste-to-energy facilities are built, it would result in less garbage heading to the Vancouver Landfill.

"The only interim solution without an interior landfill is having a discussion with Metro Vancouver, the City of Vancouver, Delta and the Ministry of Environment with regards to potentially increasing the tonnages into the Vancouver Landfill at Burns Bog for those few years," he explained.

Nenninger added one or two larger waste-to-energy centralized facilities could be built or as many as five smaller plants.

In 1999, a deal between Delta and the City of Vancouver, which operates the Vancouver Landfill, saw an unused 200-hectare (500-acre) parcel of land north of the main landfill promised to Delta, in exchange for Vancouver being allowed to fill even higher on the existing footprint. The higher levels enabled the landfill to operate for another 40 years.

Mayor Lois Jackson, chair of the Metro Vancouver board, stressed the 1999 deal won't be broken. She said the amount of garbage may come sooner but the landfill, overall, won't get more than what's set out in the original agreement.

Jackson said the regional district, which is already reducing the amount of garbage through its Zero Waste Challenge, recognized that finding a new landfill is an outdated way of thinking.

"In the long run, we hope to get out of the landfilling business and get into new scientific-proven technology which will accomplish what we need as a society, which is reducing all our garbage down to as little as possible."

Jackson said Metro Vancouver officials have toured other types of waste-to-energy facilities in Japan and will visit others.

Saying she's concerned about air emissions, Coun. Jeannie Kanakos was critical of Jackson's support for the landfill plan.

"I disagree with this approach," said Kanakos. "At a minimum the issue should have come before council for consideration and we should be talking to the people of Delta."

Coun. Vicki Huntington said she's concerned the pristine northern parcel that should have been transferred to Delta is still in Metro Vancouver's hands. She said she wants assurances the temporary dumping of extra garage at the landfill won't result in that parcel being used as a dumping ground.

"If they think they're going to expand that (landfill) agreement into additional property, then it'll be over my dead body," Huntington said.

Burns Bog Conservation Society president Eliza Olson isn't pleased to hear about Metro Vancouver's plan, saying the district should try to close the Vancouver Landfill sooner rather than later. She noted the bog is at risk by being next to a landfill, which should be located in hotter, drier places.