HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1989-01-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1989. PAGE 5.
Expensive future
Waste Study sees costs soaring as landfill sites fill up”
ESTIMATES OF REMAINING CAPACITIES
* Note 2 distinctions for the Twp of
Goderich Landfill: existing area & proposed
relocation.
Village of Blyth
Twp of Howick
Twp of Ashficld
Twp of Grey
Twp of W Wawanosh
*Twp of Goderich (proposed)
Twp of Morris
Twp of Usbornc
1 wp ot Stanley
Village of Hensail
Twp of Hay
Town of Exeter (Phase 1)
Twp of E. Wawanosh
Twp of Stephen
Town of Wingham
* Twp of Goderich (existing)
Twp of Tumbcrry
Town of Seaforth
BY KEITH ROULSTON
The message of the Stage 1 report
of the County of Huron Waste
Management Master Plan is that
garbage is not going to be something
to throw out and forget in the future.
One way or another the cost of waste
management in the county is going
to soar in years to come.
The report, which members of the
public will have a chance to examine
Thursday, January 19 in a meeting at
Bly th Memorial Hall at 7:30 p.m.
paints a grim picture of the future of
current landfill sites and the possi
bility of many of them being
expanded. For some communities,
the crisis has already hit. Seaforth
closed its disposal site at the end of
1988 because it was full and despite
spending a small fortune trying to
find a suitable new site in the area,
there just wasn’t one site found
suitable. Now Seaforth and Tucker
smith have joined the towns of
Goderich and Clinton, the village of
Bayfield and the townships of
Goderich and Colborne in the
crowded Holmesville landfill site.
But even for communities like
Blyth and Hullett, which share the
site judged by the report to have the
longest life expectancy, the inevit
able isn’t far away. By 20years from
now every landfill site currently in
use in the county is expected to be
filled. Life expectancy of the remain
ing 17 landfill sites in the county
ranges from 20 years for Blyth-Hul
lett and 19 years for Howick to a mere
oneyearforTurnberry and Goderich
Township (although an expansion of
the Holmesville site is in the works).
Moreover, astudy ofthe condi
tions of the landfills showed the
potential for expansion of existing
sites is not good. In many cases the
report says too little is known about
the hydrogeology of the sites to know
if further expansion would be
possible. The problem is that over
the years the buried garbage
produces liquid waste that seeps into
the ground. Depending on the kind
of soil and the underground pattern
of dispersement, this leachate can
make its way into groundwater,
escaping into drains, rivers or even
neighbouring wells. This discovery
of the ability of waste water to
migrate underground is part of what
has made finding suitable landfill
sites so much more difficult over the
years.
The fact many of the landfill sites
are located in old gravel pits with
porous sand and gravel bottoms
doesn’t encourage the belief they
can safely absorb the leachate from
the garbage. What the study calls
“complex” hydrogeological condi
tions are found in such local sites as
YEAR
the Blyth-Hullett, Eash Wawanosh,
Grey, Howick, Morris-Brussels and
Turnberry. The West Wawanosh
site has a relatively clayey soil so
there isn’t as much chance for
migration of the leachate as in the
sandier sites but the study doesn’t
hold out much hope for expansion
here either because of the close
proximity of Mud Lake and the lack
of high ground atthe site. Other sites
with better soil conditions at the Hay
and Stanley township sites are also
discounted for expansion because of
various other problems. If the county
Reeves wanted to get the grim truth
for their quarter million dollar study,
they certainly got it.
Ifthe study is right, all municipali
ties in the county will be going
through the very expensive process
of finding a suitable landfill site
within the next20years. Before a
new site can be licenced the Ministry
of Environment requires that test
drilling and water testing be done
around the site to solve the mysteries
of the undergroundwater patterns of
each site. In some cases engineering
changes must be done to make the
site safe.
Already, the study shows, the cost
of disposal of waste is growing
rapidly. In just two years from 1985
to 1987, the cost of waste disposal
jumped from $9.58 per capita across
the county to $11.67 per capita.
Costs of garbage collection has
also increased in the last three years
but not as significantly. Of the 15
municipalities that provide some
municipal garbagecollection, all but
one hire private contractors to make
the collection. Eight of the 15 meet
the costs of collection from general
tax revenues while seven, including
Eastand West Wawanosh, Grey,
Hullett and Brussels, put on a
special charge for garbage collec
tion.
For larger users, only two of the
municipal disposal sites have a
tipping fee for truckloads of gar
bage. Exeter charges $25 per load
while Stephen township charges $35
perload. “Atippingfee can have the
benefit of allocating the costs more
equitably than the tax base and can
also encourage the 4 R’s (reduction,
reuse, recycling and recovery) parti
cularly in the commercial/industrial
sector,” the study says.
Those 4 R ’ s are one way of keeping
the cost of waste disposal down, the
study says. The report says that
reusable and durable goods that
require replacement infrequently
are more desirable than the dispos
able goods that have become too
common in our ‘‘throw away”
society. Goods or products could be
made out of materials that aren’t as
harmful to the environment, it says.
Provincial and federal governments
should be involved in creating
regulatory programs and incentive
plans to encourage better packaging
and products.
Consumers can play their part, the
study says by making “a conscious
decision to favour goods produced
by ‘environmentally responsible’
manufacturers and packagers. The
municipality can play a role by
encouraging and promoting con
sumer awareness.”
Recycling can also reduce the
amount of waste the study says but
when the report was written there
were no large scale curbside recy
cling programs in the county. Grey
and West Wawanosh townships
with their rural populations have
depot recycling programs where
people can bring their waste news
paper, tin cans and glass to the waste
disposal site for deposit in bins but
these are not as effective as curbside
pickups. “A well advertised depot is
only expected to recover about half
as much of the municipal waste
stream as a curbside program,” the
study says. A curbside program can
recover about 15 per cent by weight
of the municipal waste. The study’s
authors recommend that those
municipalities with garbage collec
tion implement recycling programs
that at least would recycle news
paper, glass and cans.
The study says that while there are
advantages and disadvantages to
recycling “it is not considered likely
that any Waste Management Mas
ter Plan in Ontario would be
implemented without some form of
I The International
Scene
A three star
selection
BY RAYMOND CANON
Since I was relatively young there
has hardly been a year in my life
when I have not been travelling
somewhere. I have, for openers, lost
count of the number of times that I
have crossed the Atlantic nor the
number of hours I have spent in
airplanes to or from some place.
Perhaps I should have known that I
was destined to travel since my
education took place in six countries,
source separation (recycling).”
The study looks at other ways of
reducing volume of garbage to be
landfilled by mechanically shredd
ing the garbage. It notes this will
prolong the life of landfill sites but
capital costs for the equipment are
high and skilled operators are
required, meaning higher labour
costs. Highlabourcosts and high
costs of equipment are also disad
vantages of incineration of garbage,
the study says.
Similarly incinerating garbage to
produce steam energy for a nearby
factory or electrical energy has high
capital and labour costs and the
county’s population may be too
WASTE COLLECTION AND DISPOSAL
EXPENDITURES
$1,000,000
$700,000
$600,000
$500,000
$400,000
$300,000
$200,000
$100,000
$90C 000
$800,000
il Total Expenditures
S Collection
Expenditures
H Disposal
Expenditures
only two of which were of the
English-speaking variety and, if I
lost track at times just what was
supposed tobe my native tongue,
well, that is par for the course.
Thatbringsmetoalittle story.
Shortly after I married my first and,
to date, only wife, she happened to
be going through some boxes in our
basement when she came across
some of my diaries kept when I was
footloose and free. Thinking that a
quick, perusal of them might give her
a deeper insight into what made me
tick, she took them upstairs, sat
down and started to read them. That
is, she got to the encfof the first day
and, on turning the page, was highly
chagrined to discover that I wrote in
small to support the scale of such'an
operation. For an energy from waste
plant to work there must be a secure
market for the energy produced.
The study also looks at compost
ing as a possible answer but isn’t
encouraged by the possibility of
large scale municipal composting.
“One means of initiating compost
ing on a municipal level is to
encourage home composting,” the
study says. “If leaves, food wastes,
and other organic wastes were
collected and composted in back
yards and the like or even taken to a
designated landfill site for compost
ing, some landfill space could be
Continued on page 6
a different language each day. That
meant that it took eight days to go
through the cycle. She would read a
page in English and, when she got to
the English page eight days later,
there was very little if anything
which was re la tedtothe previous
page in that language. She confess
ed her frustration to me later but,
after all these years, the conten ts are
still unknown to her.
I got the idea for this article when
one of my relatives asked me, after
all the travelling! had done, whether
1 would be able to pick out three
events which stood out above the
others. That was a difficult thing to
ask in that there are any number of
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