GHG accounting - incineration's downfall

Metro Vancouver has hit a snag in its plan to build a garbage incineration empire: provincial regulation of GHG emissions.

In May the Metro Energy Committee learned (Item 5.2 in this agenda) that its existing Burnaby incinerator is the 4th largest emitter of GHG's in the region. Under the provincial cap-and-trade program the emissions from this incinerator alone will cost the region $3 million a year uin 2012 ("equivalent to 30 per cent of revenues," as reported in today's paper.)

This month Metro staff are bringing another report to the Committee ( Item 5.3 in this agenda).

This latest report whines that the province is being unfair to incinerators. Incinerators are subject to cap-and-trade costs while landfills are not. Landfills are covered by a separate piece of legislation. Metro staff admit in the report that they have not been able to bully the provincial officials into giving incinerators a break. Accordingly, the report recommends that the politicians on the Board get involved.

But the province has it right. You can reduce GHG emissions from landfills. All you have to do is keep organic materials out -- something Metro intends to do by 2015. It's rotting organic materials that are the source of landfill GHGs. Once the organics are gone, landfills will be a storage place for materials that potentially will be useful to our grandchildren.

But incinerators can't operate without sending carbon into the atmosphere -- GHG landfills in the sky. They vaporize the resources that future generations will need.

Prattfall by the Metro Board

When the Metro Board was fumbling around looking (in vain, it turned out) for a reasonable resolution to the total confusion created by their staff around the future of waste in this region, I was flying in an airplane. The news caught up with me in Montreal that our politicians had utterly failed to rise to the occasion, delivering instead a decision that was even more incoherent than the staff recommendations.

They couldn't choose between in-region incineration or out-of-region incineration. So they chose both -- with a landfill thrown in for good measure. Steadfastly, they ignored the voices of their own citizens, saying let us prove that we can cut our waste so we won't need a new waste facility.

A moment of real possibility. And we blew it.

Cities defecting from Metro's incinerator plan

Two data points don't make a trend yet, but Metro staff are probably not going to be pleased that a second city appears to be defecting from the region's incinerator plan.

Coquitlam Council's Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Environment received a report on Monday that is sharply critical of assumptions in Metro's proposed waste management plan and recommends asking the Metro Board to develop a better case for building incinerators.

The report presents a number of "issues that are yet to be resolved," mainly relating to Metro's projections of the actual cost of incineration compared to other options. The report calls for Metro to either put out a request for proposals with detailed cost estimates or have an independent review of Metro staff's assumptions.

Cost and risk are important issues for the region's municipalities.

"Local ratepayers will have to carry the full cost of capital and operations [of new disposal facilities] as it is highly unlikely that other levels of government will participate in capital cost-sharing, unlike in other Metro Vancouver services where senior governments often assist with capital costs."

(Metro's draft plan proposes senior government financial support.)

The report also covers a number of measures that Coquitlam is undertaking right now to reduce waste, including a going city-wide with a comprehensive composting program. A successful pilot this year found that the city-wide program could cut disposal costs by $70K per year.

Pic: Lou Sekora, long-time Coquitlam politician who leads the city's Regional Solid Waste Solutions Standing Committee appointed by the Mayor.

Metro is hiding data on waste quantities

At last Friday's meeting of the Metro Board I requested specific information that should be made available to the public before the consultation on the regional waste plan begins.

I was speaking of information requested in a letter of April 1, 2010, signed by myself and three others and copied to all members of the Board as well as the Minister of Environment and other interested parties.

I said to the Board that it was impossible for the public to evaluate the propsed waste plan without this information.

One of the things we asked for was the annual solid waste management plan reports for the years 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

At the meeting, I held up a copy of the Annual Report from 2004. It is no longer accessible on Metro's website. And it was the last Annual Report ever published, as far as I know.

Why are these reports so important?

Metro is basing its case for building a huge incinerator on the premise that we are running out of landfill space. They have been instilling fear in the region for years that we are about to be buried under a tide of garbage if we don't act quickly to build new disposal facilities.

Metro introduced its draft plan by saying (see page 3 of 13 of this report) that "waste quantities in Metro Vancouver are increasing every year as the population expands and particularly since 2004 when the economic fortunes of the region improved."

Far from being substantiated by annual reports, this claim was actually contradicted by a staff report to the Metro Finance Committee in July 2009 (Item 5.1, page 23 of 72).

This report advised the Committee that the waste disposal "tipping fee" has to be raised from $71/tonne to $82/tonne this year because of "declining waste flows".

The report advised the Committee that, along with declining waste flows, another factor that will drive up household costs still further (to as high as $126 per household by the year 2014) is "[t]he financial impacts of the current draft of the Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) which is currently in the consultation process."

"In particular," the report explains, "the [rate increase] projection reflects the debt service costs associated with the projected construction of new waste management facilities at a cost estimated, at this stage, to be likely in excess of $700 million...."

This report not only contradicts Metro's public messaging about our waste, it also discloses the huge financial risk we will incur if we build too much disposal capacity at huge public cost.

Is our waste growing -- or declining? If it's declining, why are they proposing we go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new incinerators that we may not need? Why won't Metro show us the actual data about our waste?

The Board listened politely to my presentation, but took no action on our request.

Metro politicians begin asking staff hard questions

Metro politicians are raising good questions about the proposed Solid Waste Management Plan. And they are not getting good answers.

First Vancouver Councillor Heather Deal pointed out that 93% of the money in the new plan seems to be directed to burning and burying waste, and only 7% allocated for the plan's first two goals: minimizing waste generation and maximizing reuse, recycling and material recovery.

And then Deal noted that 91% of that 7% is directed to the establishment of "Eco-Centres."

At a cost of up to $14 million dollars each, Deal sensibly asked: what performance targets have you set for these centres? what level of waste diversion will they contribute?

To which staff, if you can believe it, had no answer. The plan provides no information about what an "eco-centre" is. But staff confirmed that the first one will start up in Surrey in 2010.

(This could come as bad news to the established recycling businesses that pay taxes in Surrey, which would now have to compete against a publicly run facility duplicating their services.)

Then it was West Van Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones who raised her hand. She wanted to know why the "Financial Plan" within the waste plan was alloted less than half a page. "This is not a financial plan," she said. "I hesitate to receive this report."

CAO Johnny Carline replied that you don't normally include financial information in plans "because you would be tied to that," Plans are "strategic documents."

But at Goldsmith-Jones' insistence, Carline committed to bring back further financial detail to the meeting in two weeks time when the Board is intended to sign off on the plan.

Metro staff continue to bungle waste file

Things appear to be in complete disarray over at Metro Vancouver.

At last week's meeting of the waste committee, Commissioner Johnny Carline did the same thing he did several years ago when he was trying to steer through a 100-year landfill in Ashcroft without public support. He suddenly laid on politicians a recommendation that seemed to completely contradict all his previous advice.

In both cases, politicians were put in a very awkward position. They were confused, divided, and incapable of governing confidently.

In the earlier instance Carline called an unscheduled meeting of the waste committee (December 7, 2004). There was only one item on the agenda: a last-minute recommendation during the environmental assessment process (EAO) to add a second liner to the proposed landfill at an additional cost of $20 million, even though politicians had been assured all along that a single liner would suffice. Here is what I recorded as the comment by Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan:

"I don’t like being ambushed like this at such a late stage here in the EAO process. These are exactly the kinds of decisions that I don’t want to make at the last minute. If the science-based decision was right, then I don’t want to spend $20 million just for political reasons. There is no way we’ll satisfy the opponents of the landfill with this. This action could be used by the opponents as evidence that the costs will be more than we thought for the landfill. If the science-based decision was wrong, then why didn’t staff bring it to us earlier? Why couldn’t staff provide an accurate budget earlier. Maybe we should be evaluating whether the project should go forward at all."

Pitt Meadows' Don Maclean also voted against Carline's recommendation.

When the recommendation went to the Metro Board later that month, it provoked more anguished discussion and then failed. The Board actually voted against their CAOs recommendation.

Last week, after piles of "scientific" evidence supporting the development of an in-region incinerator, Carline suddenly recommended to the waste committee that the plan be amended to allow an out-of-region incinerator as a back-up option.

Again, there was much confusion at the table. Read about it in Jeff Nagel's coverage for Black Press.

No wonder the Minister intervenes!

Tide turns on Metro's incineration plan

It took a few days for the penny to drop but the press seems to be approaching a consensus that Metro's incineration plan is "burning out."

Those were the words of Province reporter Brian Lewis, published yesterday under the headline "Extension buries incinerator proposal." The previous day Coquitlam's former Mayor (and current City Councillor) Lou Sekora laid out several good reasons why he opposes Metro's incinerators in an interview with theleftcoast.ca . "

So the big question hanging in the air is: where will Metro's waste go, now that the First Nations don't want it and the incinerators are off the table?

The first step is for Metro to put the real numbers on the table. Just how much waste is actually there to be disposed of?

Every three years Metro does a "waste characterization study" looking at samples of our waste to see what kinds of things we're throwing away. Then they look at "the total municipal solid waste stream received by the entire Metro Vancouver waste transfer and disposal system" and project how much of each kind of waste (newspaper, food scraps, plastic bags, etc.) we throw away.

Here are the total amounts of waste reported in the last 3 studies:
2000: 1,066,520 tonnes
2004: 1,060,748 tonnes
2007: 1,013,700 tonnes

What's surprising about these figures?

Do you see the staggering growth in our waste that Metro Vancouver keeps claiming in order to justify the construction of incinerators (or even new landfills)?

We are well within the limits of our existing landfills and incinerator. Even if we lost the Cache Creek landfill this year, we would still have nearly enough space at the two remaining facilities (Vancouver landfill is permitted to take 750,000 tonnes each year and the Burnaby incinerator 290,000 tonnes).

It's a success story. We managed, largely through an expansion of composting programs for yard trimmings, to hold down our disposal for the last decade to zero growth.

And what of the future? The latest waste study found 350,000 tonnes of compostable organics that are taking up space in our landfills (and producing methane and toxic leachate). It also found 144,000 tonnes of recyclable paper, which is banned from disposal in our region.

That is a half-million tonnes of waste right off the top that we don't need to send to the waste incinerator or landfill. On top of that, there is 136,000 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic packaging and other products that we could give back to the producer to recycle, instead of ending up in our disposal system at community cost.

Doesn't it make sense to get aggressively behind programs to solve these problems instead of investing billions and offending our neighbours by building new incinerators and expanding landfills?

Metro’s source on health impacts of incinerators doesn’t actually measure health impacts of incinerators

Metro Vancouver frequently cites the conclusions of the UK Health Protection Agency to reassure us that incinerators won't harm our health.

The HPA is often quoted as saying things like this: "The HPA considers that modern, well-run incinerators pose only a very small and probably undetectable risk to health. This is because they have a very small impact on pollution levels locally or at a distance. In assessing risk, we take into account not only the toxicity of the compounds concerned but, very importantly, the likely concentrations to which people may be exposed."

In a letter posted on a UK Health Research website, HPA Chief Executive Justin McCracken repeats this statement, and goes on to admit that "we have not studied the 'rates of illness or premature deaths at electoral ward level around any incinerator'."

Why don't they look at the health of people living around incinerators?

Because "the number of people around an incinerator is too small to detect whether or not the incinerator is having an impact on health."

If people aren't healthy around incinerators, the HPA contends, it could be any number of things that are causing their problems: "Such studies need to be able to distinguish any influence of the incinerator (which is expected to be extremely small) from the many other factors that influence rates of illness or premature deaths."

How would you feel if the agency established to protect your health based its conclusions on what it "expects" rather than what it actually finds -- or doesn't find because, in fact, it doesn't even bother to look.

What you don't look at is, indeed, "probably undetectable."

(Metro Vancouver and the Ministry of Environment made a similar call 20 years ago when they ignored a recommendation from an early study of emissions near the Burnaby incinerator. The study had said it was unable to establish a clear link between the new incinerator the elevated levels of toxics it found in soil and vegetation in the area. It recommended that the measurements continue, to build a better database. Those tests have never been done.)

Metro waste plan sends wrong signal to businesses (and residents)

The Vancouver Sun ran two columns this morning under the same headline. One was a strange piece of vitriol by the unpredictable Marc Jaccard, who indulged in vilifying environmentalists for setting "unrealistic" targets for GHG reduction (why does this man want to abuse people who could be his base if he were a bit more polite -- and if he could be a bit self-critical of his silver bullet cap-and-trade?).

The other comment, written by the CEO of the Globe Foundation, was the one with the interesting content. The important point of this article was that Harper's climate program sends the wrong signals to the business community.

"Businesses require a clear and unambigous signal that the world is finally serious about tackling global warming," wrote John E. Wiebe.

He pointed out that clear policy signals mobilize private capital and this capital will be critically needed to re-make our economy around cleaner technology. He cited Germany, Sweden and Britain as examples where clean policy has spurred investment in clean technologies.

Drawing on that insight, what kind of signal does the waste management plan presented by Metro Vancouver staff ten days ago send to investors?

The only firm, clear commitment in Metro's waste plan is to build a huge new incinerator. They even signalled the time frame: the new incinerator will be up and running in five years. The suggests that there may be more incinerators in the years to come.

Will this mobilize capital towards opportunities in organics processing, recycling, green design? The Metro plan provides no assurance that such investments will yield returns -- especially since such facilities will be operating in competition against publicly-subsidized incineration.

Zero Waste Vancouver is preparing Plan B -- a better plan for Metro Vancouver's waste. We'll take the Globe Foundation's point and build a better plan that encourages investment in waste reduction instead of waste destruction.

Yes, we can do better.

What is MBT and why are Metro's staff so scared of it?

Metro's staff are getting desperate as they keep running into roadblocks to the huge garbage incinerators they want to build.

Last Friday they pulled out all the stops. After grudgingly agreeing -- at the Board's insistence -- to let the public sit in on a "workshop" about the new solid waste management plan, the staff switched the location of the meeting at the last minute.

Nevertheless, a handful of citizens found the crowded meeting room on the Lougheed Hwy in Burnaby and saw the long slide presentation chock full of misleading information that was developed by Metro's staff to sell the plan to the Board.

The cost issue has clearly rattled Metro's staff. Two years ago, they foolishly mentioned in their trial balloon (see Figure 9, page 11) that we'd be facing over $3 billion in costs with incinerators.

But Friday's slide show presented the bizarre assertion (all "bottom line" with no explanation) that continuing to landfill our waste will bring a "$1.5 billion cost" (their emphasis) while if we build incinerators we'll enjoy "$20 million revenue."

Never mind that even after more than 20 years we are still paying down the capital cost of the Burnaby incinerator.

But the most surprising thing to me was the effort that Metro's staff put into debunking the MBT alternative.

"MBT" (mechanical biological treatment) is a simple, low-tech process for screening and stabilizing waste before putting it in a landfill. It is being practiced more and more widely in Europe as an alternative to costly incineration. It not only extends the service life of landfills by reducing the volume of the waste, but cuts the GHG emissions from landfills by 90%.

These facts were right there in Metro's AECOM report, issued last summer.

But the AECOM report based its estimate of the cost of MBT treatment on its experience with a facility in Edmonton. This huge white elephant of a plant was built by Transalta, launched with great fanfare in 2000 as a "composting plant" -- and then sold by Transalta within a year to the City of Edmonton for $97 million.

The Edmonton facility was operated by none other than Earth Tech, a company now owned by AECOM. In 2005, Tech wrote a candid account of the facility's many problems in its design and operations.

The other MBT facility that Metro drew on for cost estimates is a facility in Halifax, also built 10 years ago.

On the basis of this limited information, Metro's staff empahsized in several slides on Friday that MBT treatment "does not add value" and is not recommended.

They clearly don't want us looking around for a state-of-the-art MBT alternative that would out-compete their mass-burn incinerators.

It's official ~ Metro Vancouver proposes incinerator(s)

Last Friday the Metro regional Board received its staff's proposal for a new solid waste management plan. They will hold a special meeting this Friday to discuss it.

The Plan confirms, in sec. 3.1.2 (a) that: "Metro Vancouver will establish up to 500,000 tonnes per year of new waste-to-energy capacity within the region."

All sorts of things will be burned in Metro's proposed incinerator(s).

Along with regular trash, the Plan proposes, in sec. 3.1.6, to burn "regional utility materials that cannot be recycled." These include "process grit and screenings" from sewage sludge, which can be reasonably expected to contain toxic heavy metals, and "spent activated carbon" from the region's drinking water treatment system. According to a producer of activated carbon filters, activated carbon filters are used to remove the following potential substances from our water: alachlor,atrazine, benzene, carbofuran, carbon tetrachloride, chlorobenzene, 2,4-D dibromochloropropane (DBCP), O, P-dechlorobenzines, forms of dichloroethylens, 1, 2-dechloropropane, cis-1,3-dichloropropylene, toxaphene, chlordane, radon, lindane, simazine, PCB's, toluene, xylenes...

Along with potential health and safety risks, Metro's Plan also promises to undermine our province's Extended Producer Responsiblity (EPR) programs.

Sec. 3.3.4 says Metro will ask the Ministry of Environment to require producers to send their "non-recyclable" products and packaging to Metro's incinerators. The intent of our provincial EPR policy is to encourage producers to design better products and packaging that can be recycled. But Metro's plan will instead open the door to burning the throw-aways instead.

In discussion last Friday, after members of the Board insisted the Plan be "released from closed," Surrey Councillor Marvin Hunt was pushing for a quick approval of the Plan. Other members of the Board, including Richmond Councillor Harold Steves, held off for a more thorough public discussion, especially with people in the Fraser Valley.

That discussion will begin with a Special Meeting of the GVS&DD Board starting at 8:00 am on Friday, December 4th, in the Metro Boardroom, 2nd floor, 4330 Kingsway (Patterson Skytrain Station).

Be there if you can. Politicians always sit up straighter when there are citizens in the room.

Pic: Marvin Hunt, CBC news, June 2008

GVS&DD Board starts spending on a facility not yet approved by the province

I missed the GVS&DD Board meeting two weeks ago but I heard some of the news coverage.

Several media outlets reported that the Board had approved some stiff increases to our regional taxes (50% increase in 5 years!). There was also mention of the hike in the garbage tipping fees, from the current $70/tonne to $82/tonne.

But why didn't anybody mention the $440 million dollar "material and energy recovery facility"?

The Board approved the first $4 million dollars as a 2010 capital expenditure. The project is identified as a "Solid Waste Management Plan Initiative," but such a facility is not authorized under the current SWMP.

The new regional waste plan has not even been unveiled yet, let alone shared for comment by the region's municipalities, let alone approved by the province. We're still being told at all the public meetings that "no decision has been made."

In 2000, need we be reminded, Metro didn't tell anyone before going out and spending $4.5 million on a ranch to build a 100 year landfill that was also not authorized under the waste plan. Now Metro is trying to figure out how to stop bleeding money operating a ranch.

Raising buffalo may look like a good option compared to where Metro is taking us next.

Metro politicians buried under piles of paper

Imagine if you were a Metro politician.

Off the side of your desk, on top of all the work you do governing your own city, you are responsible for oversight of a regional utility with an annual budget of nearly half a billion dollars.

You fulfill this duty by attending monthly meetings of one or more committees -- such as the Waste Management Committee. The Waste Management Committee oversees the solid and liquid waste utilities provided by the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District. These utilities account for over half of the total spending by the regional district ($278 million in 2009).

This month you receive an agenda package for the October Waste Management Committee that is 254 pages in length.

Buried in this package (Item 5.1) is a 108-page report summarizing your committee's Programs and Priorities for the coming year.

Buried in this report are some staggering facts. On page 42-43 you are advised that $1,134,000 will be spent on "Ashcroft Ranch - Operations." The purpose of this expenditure is "to continue the traditional agricultural use of the Ashcroft Ranch in order to preserve the ecological heritage, protect and enhance the sensitive grasslands communities, and improve agricultural productivity."

GVS&DD bought the ranch in 2000 to build a new landfill -- a project that was shelved in January 2008.

How many politicians -- to say nothing of their citizens -- know that we are spending over a million dollars a year to operate a ranch? At this rate we have spent more than twice as much operating the ranch as we paid for it originally ($4.5 million).

That is for the scrapped landfill project. On pages 53 - 54 we read that we must spend $19,361,000 to "maintain ISO 1401 certification" of the Burnaby incinerator and to "complete test trials of a dry treatment system for bottom ash."

That second cost is apparently on top of a $630,000 expenditure on page 39 for "Trial post-processing of bottom ash and use as a higher value product," and "Secure alternative disposal site for stabilized fly ash," and "Trial post-processing of fly ash and use as a higher value product."

What a heavy burden we impose on our elected officials. I spent most of the Holiday weekend trying to get my head around this agenda package. Surely there is a better way for Metro to work with its Board and committees.

Showdown coming: the people versus the "experts"

Metro Chair Lois Jackson is going way out on a dangerous limb.

In a half-page column in today's Vancouver Sun, Jackson casts her lot with a group of shadowy "experts" with ties to the incinerator industry -- and even, it seems, the tobacco industry.

In her column (probably penned by former Sun reporter Glenn Bohn, who is now part of the propaganda department at Metro Vancouver) Jackson trots out the same case for "why burning garbage is the best option" that was pitched at Metro's four forums earlier this month.

But the audiences at the forums weren't fooled. At every one of the four events, members of the audience stood up and complained to Chair Jackson that the panels were one-sided. All we were hearing was the case for incineration, people said. Why didn't Metro invite anyone to make the case against incineration?

Zero Waste BC distributed information sheets at the four events to make the case against incinerators and to expose the industry connections of the two "experts" that Metro flew in to convince us to accept incinerators in our communities.

Volunteers handed the Zero Waste information to as many members of the audience as we could reach. But, of course, Metro determines who sits at the front of the room -- and who gets half-page billing on the Op Ed page of the Vancouver Sun.

Later this month, Zero Waste Vancouver (an affiliate of Zero Waste BC) will be issuing an Alternative Plan for waste management in our region. We want to give Chair Jackson and the other political leaders in our region support in finding truly sustainable solutions that benefit the people of our region rather than big corporations from New Jersey.

Politicians want soil testing for Burnaby incinerator emissions

After a week of sustained public relations centred around the reassuring message that dioxins from waste incineration are not a health concern (... greater exposure from 15 minutes at a fireworks display, intoned Metro's visiting expert Jim Bridges over and over) it was clear at last Thursday's meeting of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee that dioxin is still an issue to some of our politicians.

Two delegations raised concerns about dioxins and other emissions at the beginning of the meeting.

Elaine Golds (Burke Mountain Naturalists) pointed out that the Burnaby incinerator seemed clean but that there was no soil testing going on. She said that Metro was proposing a 3 - 5 fold increase in emissions from additional incinerators and she was concerned about the cumulative load of emitted compounds, especially at dairy farms in the region.

Rick Glumac, a citizen member of Port Moody's Environmental Protection Committee, showed a photo of a baby to remind the committee of what was at stake if we failed to control emissions. He said that there is no continuous monitoring of dioxins at the Burnaby incinerator (a fact confirmed to me at a tour of the incinerator this month: dioxins are measured manually once every two years).

Vancouver Councillor David Cadman asked staff why there has been no soil testing from the Burnaby incinerator.

(There were tests of the soil and vegetation carried out at 7 sites in the region for 2 years before and 2 years after the Burnaby incinerator was commissioned. The report on the test findings recommended ongoing testing of soils and vegetation. This has not happened.)

Councillor Cadman asked about the dissemination of dioxin and other emissions beyond the local area and mentioned high levels of toxic compounds being found in Inuit women's breast milk.

Brenda Broughton from Lion's Bay also voiced concern. Burnaby Councillor Dan Johnston said he wanted the dioxin results for Burnaby.

Pic: David Cadman, City of Vancouver

Open letter to the Vancouver Sun

Miro Cernetig has broken the story that Metro Vancouver's "garbage crisis" is entirely manufactured.

It is about time the media caught on to this.

The facts are clear: there is plenty of capacity remaining at the Vancouver landfill and the Burnaby incinerator to manage our municipal waste far into the foreseeable future. This fact was confirmed to me months ago by a senior manager at Metro Vancouver. Why do we need to build incinerators?

Now it is time for investigative reporters follow up on this story:

• Why did Metro Vancouver manufacture a garbage crisis?


• Why, if we're running out of landfill space, is Metro Vancouver proposing to shut down the Vancouver landfill long before its scheduled closure?


• Why is Metro Vancouver asking us to spend half-a-billion dollars (and counting) on new garbage facilities when the existing ones could meet our needs?


• And, as Coquitlam Councillor Fin Donnelly asked at yesterday's Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee meeting: "What if we took half of the money that it would cost to build a new incinerator, and put it into waste reduction measures instead?"

We don't need a costly "trash panel" to start all over, asking the wrong questions.

We need good investigative reporting that will shed light on the bungling at Metro Vancouver and get our region's waste management planning process back on track.

Time running out Metro incinerator plan

Carlito Pablo suggests in the Georgia Straight that it's going to take a "long, hard campaign" to defeat Johnny Carline's incinerator plan for Metro Vancouver.

I think the truth is that time is running out for Metro's incinerator plan.

Metro had a chance to develop a good waste management plan that would be supported by the public and the region's municipalities -- but they have bungled it every step of the way. It's time to retire this plan and get a fresh start on the process.

The first task is to dispel the trumped-up panic that we are "running out of landfill space."

Why has no one challenged Carline's Chicken Little claims that we are about to be buried under a wall of waste? The fact is that we have plenty of capacity at the Vancouver landfill and the Burnaby incinerator to manage the waste we will produce when the Cache Creek landfill eventually closes (the date has already been pushed back from 2008 and now looms some time in the indefinite future).

If you look close, you see that Metro has been quietly waffling on the quantities of waste that we produce, revising the estimates downward and downward.

In the spring of 2008, it was 1.5 million tonnes (Strategy for Updating the Solid Waste Management Plan). In the spring of 2009, it was 1.26 million tonnes (AECOM report). Marvin Hunt was telling the audiences at the waste forums this week it was "one million tonnes." And then -- amazingly -- engineer Konrad Fichtner pegged the figure at "800,000 - 850,000 tonnes" in his public presentation in New Westminster yesterday.

To put those numbers in perspective: the Vancouver landfill is permitted to take 750,000 tonnes of garbage each year and the Burnaby incinerator another 290,00o tonnes. That's 1,040,000 million tonnes per year. The recently permitted expansion of the Cache Creek landfill gives us a bit of extra breathing room while we gradually reduce our waste as the public is demanding.

We are blessed to be in a comfortable position to stop talking about incinerators and get busy with the waste reduction measures that the public wants. And while we're at it, Metro's AECOM report provides good advice for immediate improvements to our landfills to reduce their environmental impacts until the day we can finally close them down.

Who will step up to the plate and show leadership here?

Take a day off work to talk rationally about incinerators

We hope lots of folks can take time off work next week to attend the Metro Vancouver Forums on Waste Management. They'll be held from noon to 2 pm on September 15 (Vancouver) and September 16 (New Westminster).

Tell the boss that $3 billion dollars and your family's health are at stake. In times like these we have to get our priorities straight.

Pic: image from GAIA, used by Sierra Club of/du Canada: "Sacrifice Zones are Not Acceptable"

What does the Cache Creek landfill extension mean?

Once again the province has foiled Metro Vancouver's effort to expand its garbage empire.

Metro has been active for well over a decade trying to build huge new regional garbage disposal facilities, and now twice the province has intervened. It isn't at all clear what the province's motives are.

In June 2005 the EA process to approve the then-GVRD's Ashcroft Landfill was suddenly suspended by the Minister of Sustainable Resource Management George Abbott. GVRD had spent $4.5 million to purchase Ashcroft Ranch and a further $5.5 million on consultants and spin-doctors pushing the project forward.

The official spin on this decision was that the province didn't want to offend First Nations who opposed the project, but the Ministry's Brian Grant had advised in a 2003 letter to the EAO that this project was not approved under the region's 1995 Solid Waste Management Plan.

We were all surprised when Metro suddenly abandoned the Ashcroft project in early 2008 and announced it was planning to build incinerators instead.

No one was madder about that than the City of Vancouver and Wastech Services, who were running profitable landfills serving our region's needs. The City of Vancouver immediately commissioned Deloitte Touche to write a report on the financial impacts on the city if Metro shut down the Burns Bog landfill and Wastech has carried out a very effective behind-the-scenes information campaign against incineration.

A central plank in Metro's garbage empire strategy has been trumping up a "landfill crisis." The fear of being buried under a wall of garbage in 2010 drove the Metro Board to grudgingly approve exporting our surplus garbage to the USA until Metro's new disposal facilities were in place.

This past weekend Environment Minister Barry Penner hinted on CKNW that Wastech's Cache Creek landfill might not close next year as scheduled and yesterday Wastech announced that a 2-year extension of the landfill's permit has been approved by Penner's ministry.

Metro claims to be as furious about this development as they were when the province shut down the Ashcroft project. Speaking after Minister Penner on the CKNW radio show on Saturday, Metro Waste Committee Chair Marvin Hunt asked how the Ministry could reject Ashcroft on the grounds of First Nations objections while approving the Cache Creek extension -- pointing out that the First Nations are just as divided in their opinion about Cache Creek.

Point scored, but it won't win the game for Metro.

Unless what's really going on is some deeper collusion between Metro and the provincial government aimed around their shared vision of garbage-to-energy incineration.

Pic: card tricks

Board of Trade speakers blast Metro study!

While I was away this summer the Vancouver Board of Trade convened a forum on Metro's waste situation. It can't have been a good day for Metro.

Both speakers sharply criticized the regional waste authority's current direction to build huge new waste incinerators. Economist Jeffrey Morris challenged Metro's assumptions about future waste volumes (Metro is basing its plan on a forecast of 75% recycling, while Morris says higher rates are possible).

Morris also stressed the need for the plan to include effective economic instruments to drive waste reduction, which will yield much better outcomes in the long run than infrastructure that competes against recycling (incinerators have to be fed...). See Morris's PPT here.

But most damning was the critique by accounting firm KPMG's Paul Levelton. He focused his remarks on the new study that Metro released last June (see the full AECOM Report here, or the Executive Summary here).

Levelton's presentation must have been humiliating not only for the report's authors (who include, incredibly, an appointed member of Metro's advisory panel on waste ~ talk about conflict of interest!) and also for the Metro employees who presumably reviewed and approved its release to the Board.

Levelton's presentation reads like the margin notes of a tough professor, pointing out elementary errors and omissions in a lazy student's work.

He opens with the statement: "a review of the recently released report by AECOM Metro Vancouver raises significant concerns that insufficient work has been done to make a decision on the future of waste management in the Lower Mainland, including an apparent preference for a waste to energy solution."

For instance, there's no financial risk analysis. There are no criteria for comparing different options. There is simply not enough information for the public to make meaningful comments or, most important, for political leaders to make informed decisions.

Levelton warned his audience that businesses in the region will bear more than half of the costs of Metro's ultimate scheme. He suggests ~ hopefully? ~ that there's still time for Metro to re-write the paper and get a passing grade.

Pic: Vancouver Board of Trade