Submission to the Regional Board Feb.11/09

PETITION AGAINST CLOSING THE AREA A LANDFILL

(This statement was given to the Regional Board Infrastructure Committee by Howard White Feb. 11. The committee later voted to close the landfill. The final vote will be by the full board Feb. 25. Things do not look good for the ol' dump.)

I’m here to speak on options for Area A waste management for the Area A Save the Landfill Committee and I would like to begin by presenting a further instalment of our petition, which now has 830 names of Area A residents who oppose closure of the Garden Bay Road landfill. We are the only group that has actually gone door to door in Area A lately and asked the residents their opinion on this topic and our finding is that the community’s historical position opposing closure of the landfill, reflected in the 83% SCRD survey of last June, is still firmly intact. People see the landfill as a valuable community asset which will serve it well in the future, and which would be a loss if closed. They also have a strong desire take part in improved waste diversion using the landfill as a base.

We understand that some board members have expressed support for closure of the Area A landfill, but only because they sincerely believe there are compelling economic and environmental reasons for it. This gives us hope, because we think those reasons can be shown to be less than compelling. Please bear with me while I attempt to do that in the short time I have with you today.

We do not accept the SCRD claim, first of all, that Area A takes a free ride on other areas in the solid waste area. We pay $400,000 a year in combined taxes and fuser fees, and that more than covers the latest landfill operating costs we have seen. If the SCRD chooses to use our tax money for community outreach instead of landfills, that is a bookkeeping choice at their end. To us, we are still paying $400,000 for solid waste management. If that doesn’t cover it, the taxpayers have indicated their willingness to pay more—but we would have to be convinced more is necessary.

It is our contention that transferring Area A waste to Sechelt would not save money. I know we have been told the savings would be in the millions, but when you think about it, the only cost that would be eliminated would be the actual cost of burying and covering waste in Area A. This is done on contract, and the contract only costs $110,000. Out of that you have to pay the new costs of trucking to Sechelt and landfilling at Sechelt, and the difference, according to the consultants, is only $30,000. On top of that you have the closure fee of $40,000. So even the best case scenario presented by the consultants would only produce an annual saving of $70,000 a year, surely a poor cause for a political confrontation with Area A that may very well drive it out of the SCRD. Seventy-three percent of residents have said they would prefer to keep the landfill even if it cost more and $70,000 a year could be covered by a tax of 4 mills. This could easily come out of the 10.48-mill solid waste tax Area A already pays. Call it “community outreach.”

Mind you, this is the best case for closure using Sterling Hansen’s figures. If you take a close look, you will see those figures are not based on hard facts, but rather on assumptions. The key factor in producing lower cost for the transfer station option is lower landfilling costs at Sechelt, which Sterling Hansen assumes to be $30 a tonne. This is, in their words, only “half of the actual operating costs at Sechelt.” I have heard staff explain this 50% cost reduction by saying the Sechelt contractor is already paid for and sits idle much of the time, so there would be little extra cost in having him handle 10-15% more volume. This is not sound cost accounting. If the work volume is increased 10-15%, so are the fuel costs and equipment wear, and it is wishful thinking to assume the contract price will not rise proportionately. If the actual $60-a-tonne operating cost at Sechelt is assumed, the transfer station option suddenly becomes $30,000 a year more costly than the Area A landfill.

Another questionable assumption is that closure fees should be applied to the Area A landfill but not the transfer station. Closure costs at Sechelt have just increased dramatically owing to the need for a new $8 million cover system and a much-reduced lifespan over which to amortize costs, and 10-15% of these annualized costs should be added to the transfer station cost for meaningful comparison. If we assume the closure fee to be the same for both options, it is the transfer station that ends up costing $70,000 more per year, not the landfill. It all depends on the assumptions.

Another very questionable assumption behind the case for closing the Area A landfill has far greater import and ought to concern every taxpayer on the Sunshine Coast. Common sense tells us that with the Sechelt landfill incurring capital costs in the many millions and having its lifespan cut to as little as 18 years, there is something wrong with just throwing away good landfill capacity as if it had no value. Full cost accounting as advocated by the Environmental Protection Agency in the US recommends landfill space be evaluated in terms of “avoided replacement cost.” As explained in the EPA handbook Full Cost Accounting for Municipal Solid Waste (1997): “Avoided replacement costs recognize that (fixed) costs might increase when older facilities…incur higher replacement due to the cost of new environmental requirements…in this situation local governments … research and estimate the replacement cost for disposal at a new landfill or another landfill including any costs for transfer...” We can research and estimate replacement cost by looking to our next-door neighbour on the Sunshine Coast. The Powell River Regional District recently ran out of local landfill space and found that the new environmental requirements made the cost of starting a new landfill prohibitive. They found the most affordable option was to export waste to Cache Creek at a cost of $160 per tonne. They also do a lot of recycling, but that costs $640 a tonne. If we use $160 per tonne for avoided replacement cost on the Sunshine Coast, we can put a number on what it actually costs to displace space at the Sechelt landfill by bringing in 2,000 extra tonnes of Area A garbage: $320,000 per year. Even using SCRD figures for everything else, this makes the transfer station option roughly $6 million more costly than the Pender landfill over the remaining 20-year life of the Sechelt landfill. Future regional boards faced with a full landfill and elevated disposal costs may well look back on any decision to close the Pender landfill as fiscally irresponsible in the extreme.

This leaves the environmental issue. We also feel the balance of environmental factors favour keeping the Area A landfill in operation. The Sechelt site, according to the Sustainable Services Manager’s report of November 29, 2009, has “existing leachate management issues.” The Area A site has effective leachate treatment that consistently meets water purity standards. The Western Expansion option would mainly build on the established footprint and would have minimal added impacts. On balance there is good reason to believe that waste would pose less risk to coast groundwater resources if placed in the Area A site than if placed in the Sechelt site.

Recycling is another concern. The transfer station option as currently planned continues the status quo at the Pender landfill, which involves landfilling largely unsorted household waste for years to come. This is contrary to prevailing attitudes among the Area A residents we canvassed, who would like to participate in improved waste diversion at the community level.

A new issue that has come to the fore in this review that has not been dealt with in previous years is that of landfill gas emissions. The Ministry of Environment does not require LFG control at landfills of Area A’s small volume but the SCRD evidently wishes to exceed government requirements in this respect and that is admirable. The argument made in the Sustainable Services Manager’s presentations is that the SCRD plans to install LFG controls at Sechelt but not at Pender; therefore Area A garbage would benefit from a projected 50% reduction of LFG if moved to Sechelt. But Sechelt’s LFG capture project has been put on hold, and it is reasonable to ask when it will be completed, if ever. Does it still make sense to spend $1.2 million for active LFG control at a site that is only going to be active for another 20 years? The proposed design is experimental--will it really reduce LFG by 50% ? There are no guarantees at this point.

We would like to propose a better and more dependable way to achieve 50% reduction of LFG emissions at the Pender landfill that would allow it to continue in operation, avoid the increased fossil fuel consumption, eliminate exhaust emissions and the traffic congestion caused by long-haul garbage trains, and would have significant other environmental benefits. This could be achieved by a 50% reduction in the volume of waste landfilled in Area A. The Area A landfill only achieves minimal diversion of household waste at present. Judging by the experience of other areas such as Hornby Island, it is feasible to increase this to at least 50% by means of a community-based recycling and resource recovery depot. The PMAC has recently recommended such a solution for Area A. This is a win-win solution that would unite the community in support, create much good will for the SCRD and we recommend it.

We call upon the SCRD board to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of Area A residents oppose closure of the community landfill for reasons that make sense to them. In it is not as important to sift the contested differences between various options as it is for the board to show our area respect for its historical and deeply held preference on this issue. We have been over this ground so many times in the past 30 years the fate of the landfill has become a landmark issue in the region’s relationship with the SCRD. It is seen not only as a waste management issue but a political one that stands as a test of the area’s ability to pursue its own aspirations within regional government. Previous boards have always come to recognize the political dimensions of the issue and agreed to support a landfill in Area A out of an understanding it is something residents emphatically want and are willing to pay for. If this board persists in pushing ahead with closure in face of the overwhelming opposition indicated in its own 83% survey and corroborated by these 830 signatures, it will create discontent that could cause far greater problems than it solves. And if the board truly has any lingering question about how strongly Area A feels, there is only one thing to do and that is to conduct a referendum or survey of sufficient and credibility as to settle the matter, and abide by the outcome.


Respectfully submitted by:
Howard White
for the Area A Save the Landfill Committee
11/02/2010