A plan by Howe Sound Pulp and Paper (HSPP) to incinerate garbage to produce power for sale to the B.C. grid continues to sit on the back burner.
The idea first came to light last summer, and since then HSPP management have been speaking with regional governments in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island, said Al Strang, manager of environment and external relations for the pulp mill. HSPP has also held in-camera discussions with three local governments on the Sunshine Coast. But the incineration proposal hinges on nailing down a fuel supply of at least 600,000 metric tonnes per year.
"There's so much politics around garbage, particularly in Metro Vancouver there are many people with fingers in the pie," Strang said. A landfill in Cache Creek currently takes on about 75 per cent of Metro Vancouver's five million tonnes of garbage each year, and the agreement is set to expire in 2009, said Wayne Thiessen, interim administrator for the Village of Ashcroft. Both Cache Creek and Ashcroft are positioning themselves to take on more of Vancouver's trash, an agreement that would mean $1 million to the economy of Central Interior region each year.
Last fall, HSPP proposed a partnership with Enmax Corporation (owned by the City of Calgary) to bid on a contract to dispose of garbage from Metro Vancouver, then incinerate it in a thermal power plant to be built at their Port Mellon mill site. (Prior to Enmax coming aboard, Elphinstone Environmental Corpora-tion was to partner with the mill.) The plant would be capable of producing 60 megawatts of electricity, and technologies exist to reduce particulate pollution from a garbage incinerator to almost zero, Strang said.
A consultant hired by HSPP determined burning Metro Vancouver's garbage in Port Mellon, rather than trucking it to Cache Creek, would result in a 70 per cent net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the garbage.
