By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun, July 25, 2011
But region required to work with Fraser Valley to address air quality concerns if it builds facility in the Lower Mainland
METRO VANCOUVER -- The provincial government has approved Metro Vancouver's plans to build a waste incinerator to burn the region's trash in or out of the Lower Mainland.
But the region is required to work with the Fraser Valley Regional District to address air quality concerns if it builds a facility in the Lower Mainland.
Environment Minister Terry Lake also said Monday that "approval to pursue waste-to-energy should not be considered a license to burn garbage" and any proposed facilities require several authorizations before they can be approved.
"I'm confident this plan will reduce the amount of garbage generated in the region and provide strong environmental protection," Lake said in a statement.
Metro's 5,000-page solid waste management report recommended investigating options for a trash incinerator or using waste "conversion technologies" such as anaerobic digestion or gasification to dispose of 500,000 tonnes of the region's garbage annually. The facility could be in or outside the Lower Mainland.
Metro officials argue the region would dramatically reduce the quantity of garbage being buried in landfills and recover energy from trash. Over 35 years, they said, a waste-to-energy facility would outperform everything else including landfills.
The regional district's contract with the operators of the Cache Creek landfill runs out in 2016. The regional district will need six years to put out a request for proposals, go through an environmental assessment review and develop potential sites for incinerators.
The Wilderness Committee is disappointed by Lake's decision to approve Metro Vancouver's waste management plan, but the real fight will start when a location is chosen for a waste incineration facility.
"It's no big surprise that Terry Lake is rubber stamping this plan, since he also supported the very unpopular hazardous waste incinerator proposal in his own riding of Kamloops - a proposal which, fortunately, his constituents were able to stop," said Ben West, Healthy Communities Campaigner with the Wilderness Committee. "Decisions like this one today would seem to suggest that Minister Lake sees his job as helping big companies get around dealing with environmental concerns, rather than actually protecting our environment," said West.
Metro Vancouver produces about 1.4 million tonnes of garbage every year.
The solid-waste management aimed to divert garbage through recycling programs, increasing the recycling rate from 55 per cent today to a minimum of 70 per cent by 2015 through initiatives such as region-wide composting, more bans on things that can't be recycled and mandatory recycling in all multi-family and commercial buildings.
More to come...
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