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After more than four years of community engagement and dozens of reports and background documents the city’s Solid Waste Master Plan is being presented to Ottawa Council for approval on June 25. For all that, the plan is a remarkably anemic document hobbled by a seriously restricted ability to fund its implementation over both the short and medium terms.
Council needs to up its game to ensure that we can extend landfill life even further than currently envisioned. However, because of a lack of money, it will take some years before real action on the plan comes to fruition. The plan is full of commitments to develop strategic plans and pilots for particular elements rather than do actual program implementation. Programs to collect textiles and manage home construction waste are going to have to wait while the Trail Road Landfill continues to fill with more waste than necessary.
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Solid Waste staff report that the Solid Waste reserve fund has a deficit of $25 million and that it requires balancing and investment to support future capital investments. Even without implementing any of the 25 SWMP action areas, the cost of solid waste services will need to go up to meet regulatory requirements. There is also a need for major capital investment in organic waste processing after the end of the current composting contract in 2030.
The city has acted in the past year to extend the life of Trail Road to 2048 by filling in parts of the current site and by restricting commercial waste. Further reducing waste and otherwise diverting it from disposal will require new capital and program investment. The plan states that for full implementation, annual per household funding needs to increase from the current average annual household rate of $185 to $365 in 2034. The rate change will be phased in over a decade to allow time for building the necessary financial reserves.
With the exception of the launching of the curbside green bin program, the sad reality is that over many years solid waste finances, policy and programs have been neglected by city council. We now have to play catch up. Data from the SWMP shows that Ottawa spends significantly less per household on waste than comparable municipalities such as Edmonton, Toronto, Peel Region and Vancouver. This low level of spending is not a measure of efficiency or effectiveness. It is a measure of neglect and demonstrates a lack of long-term financial and program planning. If we had been investing in solid waste programs as many others have done, we would have a much higher waste diversion-from-disposal rate; far fewer recyclable materials and organics in our garbage; and we would have a significantly longer life expectancy at the Trail Road landfill.
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Given how essential and important the management of solid waste is, surely we can do better. It is remarkable that the city is so ill-prepared to aggressively launch the SWMP action areas to reduce our reliance on landfill disposal. The answer is to more aggressively roll out the changes to the solid waste fee and to draw on resources from elsewhere in the city’s budget to roll out the 25 plan action areas much more quickly. The rollout of green bins to multi-residential buildings will take another four years.
It’s time to pick up the pace. Stronger commitment from council, more resources in the short and medium terms and managing Trail Road as a likely irreplaceable piece of infrastructure are essential if the Zero-Waste Vision that is the cornerstone of the Solid waste Master Plan is to become a reality.
Duncan Bury is co-founder of Waste Watch Ottawa.
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