Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Waste Management of Canada is getting ready to restart the application to expand its Carp Road landfill site.
In September 2006, the company started the process to seek provincial approval to more than triple the size of the dump, but stopped after a public outcry.
Yesterday, spokesman Wes Muir said the company plans to unveil its revised plans to the community soon, although he did not give a specific timeline.
“We’re going to go back to the community in short order with two options,” he said. “One is a smaller landfill-only expansion. The other option is an energy-from-waste facility,” he said.
The energy facility would still require some more modest expansion of the landfill to dispose of the ash left by the process, he said.
The technology has been operating for 20 or 30 years throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, and burns waste in high-temperature units. The energy created turns turbines to generate electricity.
With community input, the company will finalize the proposal it submits to the environment ministry. That will include proposed terms of reference for an environmental assessment.
“We’d like to get the terms of reference into the community for comment and back to the Ministry of the Environment as soon as possible,” he said.
“The fact is that we’re running out of capacity at Carp Road,” he said, adding the landfill site could last three to four years. “We want to expand the facility so we can help Ottawa in managing its waste for the next 20 years.”
In July, company officials asked the city to stop sending residential waste to Carp Road. It now accepts only industrial and commercial waste, to prolong the dump’s life.
The city’s public works department agreed and residential waste was diverted to the Trail Road facility. This has angered councillors who feel they should have been consulted.
“We are reducing flow and that waste now has to find another home, but the problem is there is a lack of disposal capacity in Eastern Ontario,” Mr. Muir said. “Trail Road has undergone an expansion and the small industrial and commercial site in Navan has gone through a very small expansion, so there are no other facilities.
“If we were to close our facility, that would put a tremendous strain on the other two landfills and they would fill up very quickly; then you’d be in a situation like other Ontario municipalities, which ship their waste to northern Michigan or northern New York State.”
Meanwhile, yesterday morning, journalists toured the Carp Road facility to see what the firm has done to reduce environmental complaints.
Ross Wallace, the site manager, pointed out a plantation of 25,000 poplar trees, fed by nine million litres of leachate collected from the dump annually. Planted about 18 months ago, the saplings are already between 2.5 metres and four metres high.
He pointed out the environmental refuge, ponds that are home to geese and ducks during the summer and raptors, such as grey owls, in winter. Surrounding woodlands shelter fox and deer, he said.
Grass, seeded weeks ago over a metre of clay and 15 centimetres of topsoil on the dump’s sloping walls has taken root.
The grass combats erosion on a hill that climbs 45 metres above the surrounding land. It will be another five metres high before the dump closes.
The company operates 108 wells to collect methane gas from the massive mound. The gas is drawn by vacuum into two flare stacks to be burned.
Solar power units have been installed to charge batteries on pumps that remove water from the gas wells. The water could impede gas collection, he said.
Two years ago, the site fed 15,000 to 20,000 gulls and other scavenging birds a year, he said. A full-time bird-control staffer who fires screamer and banger rounds from a small handgun, has reduced that to nearly zero.
His efforts keep them flying.
“If we keep them off the ground, they can’t eat,” Mr. Wallace said. “If we keep them off the ponds, they can’t drink.”
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007