Watershed Sentinel to probe Sweden's smugness: are they really all that green?

Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson (Sultans of Sleaze) provides some context for our politicians' recent junket to Sweden in the forthcoming Nov/Dec issue of BC's environment magazine Watershed Sentinel. She found rising imports of waste from other countries in the past decade - and resulting increases in ash and emissions. Find Watershed Sentinel at www.watershedsentinel.ca

One sided panel criticized at Metro Forum

OK, Metro Vancouver CAO Johnny Carline is no longer pretending that he is open-minded about how we should manage waste in the region. He is reported in today's Vancouver Sun to be in "the burn-it camp."

But yesterday's news warned that he will face "a wall of public opposition" if he tries to move his agenda forward. And he got a taste of that at the first of Metro' sgarbage forums yesterday.

Metro was repeatedly critized for presenting a one sided panel. Here is some
background on the "experts" Metro flew in from Europe to speak at the forums and a Myth Busters reference sheet for deconstructing the experts' testimony.

These were being handed out by the new Zero Waste BC Network. A whole lot of new people are helping to build that wall of opposition.

The experts will face their fourth and final audience this noon in New Westminster.

Will composting become part of Vancouver's food policy?

The Vancouver Food Policy Council advises City Council on how to improve our food system, including production, processing, access, distribution, consumption and waste management. Its members include nutritionists, food wholesalers and distributors, food retailers and grocers, managers of non profit organizations and academics engaged in the food system.

Meetings are open to observers from the public. They are held every second Wednesday of the month. The September meeting is tomorrow night, September 9th, in the Strathcona Room, sub-basement of City Hall, 6:00 pm.

As a new member -- the first appointed from the "waste management" part of the food system, I'm on the agenda to explain why food waste composting is the new recycling. I'm going to urge the FVPC to use its clout and convince our City Council to get out front and make our city a North American leader in food waste composting.

And all the groups they need to make it happen will be in the room. Watch it happen!

Pic: Food guru Herb Barbolet, active member of the VFPC

Do we want Covanta to run the Burnaby incinerator?

For the third time in my memory, the company that holds the contract to run our local incinerator has been flipped: Montenay -> Veolia -> Covanta. Just who is Covanta?

Read this interesting story about Covanta's record of environmental violations. It ran in a US newspaper last month. Is this the kind of neighbour we want moving in next to our agricultural land reserve?

Will the Metro Vancouver Board have to sign off on this company taking over a contract they signed with Veolia?

Pic: Durham Environment Watch. (Citizens spoke, but Covanta had other means.)

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"

Kamloops Council rejects industrial incinerator

Incinerator developers, take note. One more community has mounted a successful defence against a proposal for "waste-to-energy."

This one happened in record time.

Citizens in the interior BC town of Kamloops (pop. 83,000) apparently got wind of a proposal to install an incinerator in their community on August 18th. It went down in a unanimous vote of disapproval by Kamloops City Council on September 1st.

The project had the Canadian Pacific Railway behind it -- the plant would get rid of their creosoted wood ties.

There was also the suggestion of support from First Nations people -- the proponent was called Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation. First Nations are sharply divided on waste projects in this province, and this division is cynically exploited by opportunistic entrepreneurs.

But the community threw up an amazing website with a rich menu of actions to take -- and the community stood up and took action. Almost 200 people showed up at the City Council meeting on a couple days' notice.

Along with Christina Lake, Kamloops was a wake-up call for the incinerator industry and the governments who think waste-to-energy is our future. We want real economic development that builds our communities.

Congratulations, Kamloops!

Pic ~ Kamloops city website.

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