After an intense two-day design charette, the technical design team (TDT) for the Pender Harbour resource recovery facility has put in place the "broad strokes" for what the facility should be and how it should work.
The 12-volunteer TDT spent two days discussing everything from zero-waste theory to where a facility in Pender Harbour could be located and who should run it.
The results of the team's work won't be available to the public until they are brought to the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD)'s infrastructure services committee, but SCRD manager of sustainability services Dion Whyte said the group did an excellent job putting forward the community's desires for "location, what materials can be collected, what types of processing would happen at the site, what kind of design or layout considerations needed to be incorporated and roles and responsibilities - who's going to be involved and in what capacity."
"I can definitely say the desired collection of this facility is pretty comprehensive," Whyte said.
The charette was facilitated by Brock Macdonald, executive director of the Recycling Council of B.C., Pender Harbour director Eric Graham, Recycling Council of Alberta executive Christina Seidel and zero-waste expert Richard Anthony.
As for the next steps, Whyte said consultants will now pore over the information collected during the charette and prepare a report for the TDT to review. It will then be sent on to the SCRD and, likely, beyond that to the solid waste management plan update working group where recommendations will be fed back to the SCRD board.
Whyte said any major decisions will have to wait until the update is complete and the finances can be included in the 2011 budget. He said the TDT is committed to seeing the project through as quickly as possible.
"The group was very clear they didn't want to see this take forever to have some of these things take place, and there's an imperative in Pender being that the landfill is quickly reaching capacity. They see that as an opportunity to continue the momentum," Whyte said.
Macdonald said he was impressed with the TDT and its attitude and the work it produced in such a short time.
"Everybody had the big picture in mind and was trying to keep folks in the community at the forefront of their input. I thought it was a really positive experience. Everybody contributed very well," he said. "I think this was a good first step. It helped flesh out some of the things that need to be considered."
