Metro has been misleading the public about its incinerator plans

Tomorrow the new GVS&DD Board will consider a blockbuster report by the "Inquiry Officer" appointed to straighten out the fuss between Metro Vancouver and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority over who gets the Canfor lands.

The two have been fighting over this plum piece of real estate in New Westminster, where Metro is determined ~ it is now on the official record ~ to build a waste-t0-energy incinerator using whatever means it can.

When the Port outbid Metro (offering to pay $10 million more than Metro's offer) Metro resorted to expropriation.

The Port called for an Inquiry into whether Metro was justified in using the "extraordinary and intrusive power" of expropriation.

The Officer appointed to look into the matter found that Metro had submitted conflicting testimony. GVS&DD Commissioner Johnny Carline had stated that Metro planned to build "primarily" a waste to energy incinerator, while Fred Nenninger, the manager in charge of utility planning, said Metro planned to build a whole "panoply" of waste facilities there.

But both admitted that Metro didn't really know for sure what it was going to build there. The Inquiry Officer, Bernd Walter, put it, mildly: “firm plans for all or any of these activities or facilities are not yet finalized, much less approved.”

Walter concluded his report with a recommendation that the GVS&DD go back to the drawing board and figure out what its "evolving plans" are before making a purchase decision.

My question: did anyone tell Marvin Hunt about this?

For months, Hunt has been busy shushing people who claim that Metro is planning to build incinerators. He has been saying that nothing is decided.

But this Inquiry Report makes it clear that Hunt and Carline and the Communications Department at Metro have been intentionally misleading the public. Indeed, we learn in the Report that the GVS&DD Board gave its authorization to go ahead with the purchase for that purpose.

They say justice is blind, but only if they pull the wool over her eyes.

A lot of gasification

First there was the phone call on Monday, January 7th from Mayor Joe Trasolini of Port Moody. He wanted to help me understand the new plasma gasification technology for solid waste. It is not incineration, he assured me. He had visited the Plasco plant and looked thoroughly at it, and he was "pushing" this technology (his word) as the solution to our growing waste problem.

Then a few weeks later the phone rang again. It was a representative of Plasco. He was offering a chance to sit down with Plasco CEO Rod Bryden to learn more about the technology. I told him it was not a good use of either Mr. Bryden's or my time, since I had read Plasco's publicity about plasma technology.

Then last week another phone call. This time it was a familiar name: Ron Unger. Ron was getting back into waste management consulting after a number of years. He wanted to sit down with me and get some background to help him with a new client. I agreed to meet Ron for coffee.

And who did his new client turn out to be? Plasco.

I gave Ron more than two hours of my time and asked him to take back the following message to his client:

There is no way that I will ever support the development of a plasma gasification plant for my region's solid waste. In fact, I will do everything in my power as a citizen to ensure that such a plant is never built in Metro Vancouver.

Like mass-burn incineration, which I also oppose, plasma gasification converts garbage to CO2 and dumps it straight into the atmosphere. This includes biogenic carbon (yard waste, food waste, paper) that could be used to replenish the soil, as well as fossil carbon (plastics) that we should put safely back in the ground where it came from. It also includes the embodied carbon (the energy that was consumed to make the products destroyed through incineration/gasification) -- which may turn out to be the greatest waste of all.

For a really clear explanation of the embodied carbon concept, listen to Clarissa Morawski answering the nonsense peddled by another of Plasco's salesmen, Conservative MP Bob Mills. Mills and Morawski were interviewed on The Current last week. You'll have to wait for the second segment of the show, and the second half of the segment, to hear Clarissa.

Now, Plasco, please take me off your distribution list. It's bad enough to be mined for counter-arguments by paid hacks. But I am particularly uncomfortable when elected politicians "push" specific technologies. This is not their job. It makes me wonder who they are really working for.