At the last meeting of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee, Vancouver Councillor Peter Ladner was incredulous. Here's how the discussion went:
LADNER: I am interested in the financial projection of the household impacts. I read in the middle of this report that there will be $446 million being spent on waste-to-energy by 2017. Are we saying that we will be hit with a half-billion dollar expense?
TOIVO ALLAS (staff): there will be full discussion by the board of each expenditure as we go along…
But once we issue the Request for Proposals "early in 2008" we will be headed down the road towards that half-billion expense. Shouldn't we be talking about the expenses now, rather than after the RFP is issued?
Why is MetroVancouver willing to earmark half a billion dollars for unproven waste-to-energy technology, when they won't spend any money at all on composting - a technology that local municipalities say they want, and which is an unfulfilled promise from the 1995 Solid Waste Management Plan?
