Pontiac’s waste-to-energy plan turns to ashes

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A plan by MRC Pontiac to accept garbage from Ottawa, Gatineau and other surrounding communities and burn it for energy has gone up in smoke.

The MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors voted unanimously this week to bury the project following months of controversy.

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Council voted instead to develop a zero-waste strategy that would significantly reduce the garbage going to landfill by improving rates of recycling, composting and waste reduction.

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“We need to reduce what’s going into landfill, but an incinerator is not the solution for the Pontiac,” said Litchfield Mayor Colleen Larivière, who tabled the motion that called for the waste-to-energy project to “be abandoned completely.”

The rejection of the proposal, championed by Warden Jane Toller, comes after five public information sessions during which MRC Pontiac officials presented local residents with an initial business plan in support of the project.

Durham Region, York Region, Vancouver and Charlottetown are among the Canadian municipalities that now employ waste-to-energy technology to manage their residual waste. The technology is widely used in Europe, and parts of Asia.

Toller, the elected warden of MRC Pontiac, proposed building a waste-to-energy plant in Litchfield, one big enough to process 400,000 tonnes of garbage from Ottawa, Pembroke, Renfrew County, Gatineau and other Outaouais municipalities.

Otter Lake councillor Jennifer Quaile, a member of MRC Pontiac’s waste management committee, said Friday she was pleased the proposal had been shelved, given its environmental and financial risks.

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“People of the Pontiac came out in droves to express their overwhelming opposition to having an incinerator of this size,” she said.

A public interest group, Friends of the Pontiac, collected more than 3,000 signatures on a petition opposed to the plan.

In an interview Friday, Toller said opponents of the project were well-organized and their message overwhelmed the region’s attempts to communicate its vision.

“The pressure has been intense, I’ll say that,” Toller said. “There has never been such a controversial issue for quite a while — definitely not in my six years here.”

Toller also left the door open to the possibility of building a smaller waste-to-energy facility to serve MRC Pontiac, Gatineau and other neighbouring regional municipalities in Quebec. “We’ll see if there’s another part of the Outaouais that would like to locate a facility like this,” she said.

A zero-waste strategy, she said, will not solve the waste disposal problem in the region because, even if it’s successful, about half of the waste stream will still have to be landfilled or incinerated.

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“We are going to actively research a solution for the residual waste,” Toller said, adding: “At least now we have the attention of the people in our region to think about garbage. Before they just wanted it to disappear.”

Quaile said she was not convinced Toller had accepted defeat on the issue and believed she may push for a smaller incinerator.

“If she does,” Quaile said, “I am totally confident that Pontiacers will stand up with even stronger resolve to oppose any further plans for burning garbage in our beautiful region.”

Last year, City of Ottawa staff recommended that city council consider using waste-to-energy technology as part of its long-term waste management strategy.

If nothing is done, the report warned, the Trail Road Waste Facility, the city’s primary landfill site, will reach capacity between 2034 and 2035.

According to a European Parliament report, landfill is “almost non-existent” in countries such as Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and Finland, all of which rely on waste-to-energy plants, alongside aggressive recycling and composting programs.

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Lithuania, Latvia, Ireland, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland also use incineration and send less than one-third of their municipal waste to landfill.

In Ottawa, about 45 per cent of waste is diverted from landfill through recycling, composting and other measures.

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