Brian Lewis, The Province, June 29, 2010
It looks as if some politicians and senior civil servants in B.C. are not immune to the dreaded Gordon Campbell Disease, or "GCD" as it's commonly called.
Its first sign is a sudden loss of hearing, especially when taxpayers attempt to tell said officials that what they are proposing is as welcome as diarrhea on a fully booked overseas flight.
The second sign is loss of vision from the end of the official's nose all the way out to infinity, especially when repeatedly shown the error of his or her ways.
Alas, the final sign of GCD's onslaught likely has some fancy Latin name, but let's just call it a "brain freeze."
Once this happens, the official mindlessly plods on with the proposal regardless of the consequences, personal or otherwise, as we've seen with Victoria's mishandling of the hated Harmonized Sales Tax under the Campbell clan.
Now the GCD has infected Metro Vancouver, where the regional government continues to push for a $470-million waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration plant as part of its solution for disposing of just under half of the 1.2 million tonnes of garbage this region produces annually.
Opposition to the plan is strongest in the Fraser Valley since most of the pollution the plant would create would be funnelled into its confined airshed via prevailing westerly winds.
Regardless, metro continued to promote its WTE desires blatantly during a series of public meetings that included stops within the Fraser Valley Regional District as well as in its own jurisdiction.
Metro has taken this stance even though Victoria has added capacity to the Cache Creek Landfill, where much of metro's garbage is now dumped, and extended its life for another decade or so.
In other words, metro is as fixated and determined on dumping its WTE incinerator on everyone in the Fraser Valley as Premier Gordon Campbell and his MLA flock are in dumping the HST on every consumer in B.C.
The reaction, in both cases, is predictable.
You know all about the anti-HST petitions spearheaded by former premier Bill Vander Zalm and a similar response is now building throughout the Fraser Valley over incineration.
Last week, for example, the FVRD voted -- unanimously -- not to support metro's WTE strategy to annually incinerate 500,000 tonnes of garbage that otherwise won't be recycled, composted or otherwise diverted from households, businesses and industry.
"We are happy to support the initiatives in the Metro Vancouver plan to divert waste and increase reduction, reuse and recycling," said FVRD chair Patricia Ross.
"But the Fraser Valley is home to a unique and sensitive airshed and we simply cannot support a strategy that involves the ongoing need to supply incinerators with waste, the uncertainty regarding the contaminants that would be discharged and the potential effects on human health and the environment in the valley," she added.
However, opposition to this proposal is also rooted in uncertainties over the so-called science that metro is using in trying to make its case -- but now metro's cost estimates for the project are being questioned as well.
Last week, the City of Chilliwack's engineering department filed a report with the council that compared metro's WTE project costs with a similar project about to be built in Durham, Ont.
The Durham plant is further along in planning and development, and in both the capital and operating cost categories, its estimates were about twice as high as the metro estimates.
This conclusion that metro's cost estimates are far too low is similar to a KPMG report released earlier this year. And now KPMG has another report suggesting the actual per-tonne costs of disposing of metro's 500,000 tonnes annually could be as much as four times the costs of continuing to use the extended Cache Creek Landfill.
One wonders whether or not metro's intransigence is related to the fact that its directors are not directly accountable to the people.
Perhaps it's time this changed.
blewis@theprovince.com
