It’s time for the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District to either do their business or get off the pot when it comes to their solid waste management plan.
The ACRD is still dithering about whether or not to implement kitchen and yard waste collection, two years after it was first brought up. And now we hear that the landfill is perilously close to hitting a ministry of environment limit for methane gas emissions, due in part to food waste in the dump.
The solution if we exceed that limit will cost millions of dollars, and frankly, that stinks.
The ACRD has had a solid waste management plan in place since 2007 but only now are they making significant movement on it. That’s eight years of constipated governance.
Other communities are already on board with organics collection, and the costs and benefits on the surface look like a better alternative for the ACRD than a gas emissions collection system.
The Comox Valley Regional District started a curbside organic waste collection service in 2013 and currently have a pilot project on the go with a composting facility. The ACRD only need look at their partners to the north for some ideas.
If land is a problem—the smell of a composting facility would not be conducive to a residential area—the former 10-acre tire recycling plant near the landfill has been cleaned up and is sitting empty.
Our landfill will outlive its usefulness by 2104, which isn’t that far away given the sluggish speed governments typically work.
If we’re wasteful, that end will come more quickly. Governmental platitudes are nothing but hot air. It’s time to act.
— Alberni Valley News