It's a head-scratcher that the City of St. Albert is exploring a plan which would defy its own environmental master plan.
A proposal to consider bringing gasifying burn units to St. Albert as part of a zero-waste strategy doesn't seem to make either economic or environmental sense.
City council has charged administration with investigating the possibility of putting the unit/s in Lakeview Business Park (formerly called the Employment Lands) just north of Big Lake and west of Ray Gibbon on Meadowview Drive.
City manager Kevin Scoble, who has championed the zero-waste idea, said the plan would be to dump all city waste together and incinerate it. There would be no more recycling or composting, two programs that have successfully diverted thousands of tonnes of waste from the city landfill. Scoble estimated the cost at under $10 million. Some experts estimate it would be at least double this amount.
Experts say that the units are not tried or true, require large volumes of waste, and would discourage people from limiting waste through waste diversion like composting and recycling. The units are also not designed for cities our size and are expensive to operate. Because the units require large volumes of trash to be economical they tend to encourage finding more trash, instead of reducing it.
This plan does not build on good best practices in waste diversion and recycling.
It is unknown what residual smells or smokes might emanate from such units. We don't know whether there will be flare stacks or smokestacks. Did we mention that the Lakeview Business Park is upwind of the city and located just north of Big Lake, a provincial birding destination? The city's Red Willow Park master plan calls for a wildlife viewing area to be set up just south of this location.
Will this mean every garbage truck in the city will be routed into the Lakeview Business District?
St. Albert's Environmental Master plan focuses on reducing solid waste generation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting environmental stewardship.This proposal seems to take us away from those goals.
From a zero-waste perspective, landfill can be superior to incineration, as it essentially "banks" the material for later. As markets shift, you can later tap those resources for recycling. With incineration, it's one and done.
St. Albert has landfills and recyclers within spitting distance and a population that is already reducing its waste through recycling and composting. We don't have an excuse for not managing our waste properly.
If we want to explore waste to energy, why not go regional. Edmonton has a perfectly good waste to energy facility already and would likely love to see support from St. Albert.
So if it is bad for the environment, bad for the taxpayer, and not tried and true technology, then why are we even looking into this? Good question. Ask city officials. We do not want taxpayers’ dollars going up in smoke.
