The decision is made: the Pender Harbour landfill will be converted to a transfer station.
At the Thursday, March 11, board meeting, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board voted to adopt a previous recommendation from staff, consulting firm Sperling Hansen and Associates, the SCRD's solid waste plan monitoring advisory committee (PMAC) and solid waste management plan (SWMP) working group to convert the landfill.
Also included in the vote was a motion for the board to follow PMAC and SWMP working group's guidelines to ensure that the transfer station includes a component for increased waste diversion and resource recovery -something both sides in the debate insisted on.
The vote followed a report from staff exploring the possibility of leaving the decision up to Pender Harbour residents in a referendum if area residents were willing to pay for the costs of the referendum, consulting reports required to apply for an expansion and the future operating costs of the landfill. The costs projected by staff were $57,194 for the referendum and $150,000 for application costs.Area A director Eric Graham said the cost was simply too much for Area A residents to bear alone.
"I really wanted a referendum in order to find out from everybody, but I could not suggest Area A go ahead with a referendum if it's going to cost $57,000. We just can't afford it for many reasons," Graham said.
Graham then pushed for other board members to consider sharing the costs as Pender Harbour contributes to some portions of the budget more than what it receives in services.
Other directors said they could not justify asking their constituents to pay for a referendum that would not allow them to vote as well - especially when landfills are a regional issue. Halfmoon Bay director Garry Nohr said his constituents would largely be in favour of the transfer station and would not want to take on any further taxes for a referendum or expansion.
Graham voted against the motion for a transfer station.
In a later interview this week, Graham said the fallout from the decision has been so great in his area, he has no choice but to fight the decision.
"People are demanding my resignation -the whole works," he said. "I really think I'm going to have to fight this hard because the majority of the people are getting really militant. I have to respect some of the stuff they're saying."
Graham said he feels there is a clear majority of people in favour of expansion and he plans to meet with SCRD chief administrative officer John France and board chair Donna Shugar to press the board to reconsider. He said he still feels placing the entire cost burden on Area A residents is unfair, adding he needed more time to go over the numbers before addressing the board.
Graham said he now prefers expanding the landfill to take pressure off the Sechelt landfill, which has about 18 years of lifespan left. He added he would be committed to making sure the resource recovery plan would be followed through on.
The decision has been a letdown for Area A residents who were lobbying for the expansion option.
Howard White, president of the Save the Landfill Committee, called the decision a "kick in the stomach," saying Pender Harbour residents by no means see this issue as done. He said residents are now considering how they might appeal to the provincial ombudsman, Ministry of Environment and are raising old talks of Pender Harbour incorporation.
"I think that was an extremely hasty decision that makes a mockery of the board's statement that they did actually care what Area A people thought," White said. "I have never, in all my years here, heard more talk about getting out of the regional district, about not being able to trust them to look after our interest and I would be amazed if that didn't develop into a full-blown incorporation movement very shortly."
White said the resource recovery portion of the decision does not contain strong enough language to guarantee it will ever happen.
"We think that's just talk," he said.
The decision is not without those celebrating it, though. Phil Ragan, a member of PMAC and Concerned Citizens for Sustainable Waste Management, said the transfer station option combined with stepping up waste diversion and resource recovery was the only responsible option for the SCRD to follow.
He said he was satisfied with the public process and pleased the board followed the "triple bottom line" principle of environmental, economic and social impacts all being considered.
"That whole process, I felt, was handled very professionally, very thoroughly and I think they gave everyone the opportunity to speak their minds, but in the end, nobody is entitled to anything other than the facts," he said.
Ragan said he is eager to see the community reconcile its differences that arose in the debate and that focusing on waste reduction is the best way to do that.
"If there was a common thread between all the people participating in this debate, it was that sustainability was an issue and zero-waste and moving forward with waste recovery is an important aspect in this," he said. "That's the key issue to the whole thing and why the residents of the Coast are all going to win. We're on a path to maximize diversion and, ultimately, zero-waste if that's possible to be achieved."
