Vancouver Board of Trade: Response to Metro Vancouver Integrated Solid Waste & Resource Management Plan
July 5, 2010
Mayor Lois Jackson, Chair, Metro Vancouver
and
Mayor Greg Moore, Chair, Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee
c/o Metro Vancouver Public Involvement Division
4330 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5H 4G8
Via Email: icentre@metrovancouver.org
Dear Mayors Jackson and Moore
Re: Response to Metro Vancouver Integrated Solid Waste & Resource Management Plan
The Vancouver Board of Trade is vitally interested in the sustainability of our community – not only its economic sustainability, but its social and environmental sustainability as well.
That is why we care deeply about initiatives such as the current draft Metro Vancouver Integrated Solid Waste and Resource Management Plan, now undergoing public consultation. We thought we should share the attached paper with you, in that we are fully in support of its approach and relevance to Metro Vancouver and indirectly, the City of Vancouver.
This paper was developed by the Waste Management Task Force under the Lower Mainland Economic Sustainability Panel (LMESP) – a coalition of Chambers of Commerce and Boards for Trade from Hope, BC, across the Lower Mainland, to Squamish, BC. It also includes the Business Council of BC. The Vancouver Board of Trade is a founding member of the LMESP, and sits on the Waste Management Task Force.
We want you to know that our Board of Directors supports the approach and goals of the ISWRM Plan. We see a role for business organizations such as ours to work with you and Metro Vancouver to achieve these goals. We look forward to the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of working with you on this.
However we do want to draw your attention to some specific concerns we have with Goal #3: “Recover energy from the waste stream after material recycling.” and Goal #4: “Dispose of all remaining waste in landfill, after recycling and energy recovery.”
Our concerns deal with potentially dramatic costs of the current three proposed waste treatment options and the need to re-open the scope of solid waste management options to allow for more flexibility of solid waste management over time.
We encourage you to recommend to Metro Vancouver that they not limit solid waste management options to waste-to-energy and Vancouver landfill – that they leave all options open. Metro Vancouver and communities like ours need the flexibility to use a variety of waste management options to reduce our waste and recycle as much as we can. New options seem to be coming available each year.
We also encourage you to recommend to Metro Vancouver that they undertake due diligence of the short and long-term costs of all options to the taxpayer, including comprehensive multiple criteria analysis, financial risk analysis, lifecycle analysis and GHG and carbon footprint analysis – of all options. The current information from Metro Vancouver is sketchy at best, and does not provide this.
We are also concerned that the present report assumes all remaining waste will be accommodated in the Vancouver landfill even though Metro Vancouver still has a contract with Belkorp to use the Cache Creek landfill until 2010. In addition, that particular landfill has had its license extended and an addition has been made to the site providing a further 20-25 years of available space.
In summary, we feel the present Metro Vancouver position on waste management is deficient in several areas and any decision on the disposal of solid waste should be postponed until these deficiencies have been addressed.
We thank you for your ongoing care and commitment to our community’s quality of life and sustainability. We look forward to working with you on that goal.
Sincerely
Jason McLean
Chairman and Chief Elected Officer
cc: Vancouver City Council Members of Metro Vancouver Board
Johnny Carline – Chief Administrative Officer, Metro Vancouver
Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee Members
LMESP Members
****Please note that the agreement for the Cache Creek Landfill goes until 2016 not 2010 as stated in the letter. Thank you.