B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake has approved the updated solid waste management plan for the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD).
In a letter dated Oct. 5, Lake formally approved the new document, but also listed nine conditions for the SCRD to meet, as well as a recommendation on open burning that raised some questions among directors.
"The plan is approved, but we still have to meet these conditions. That's what this letter means," Dion Whyte, the SCRD's manager of sustainability services, said during the Nov. 1 infrastructure services committee meeting.
While Lake wrote that the plan as submitted "does not fully meet my requirements," Whyte said the clause is "pretty standard language" for a letter of approval and that "a lot of the conditions are standard."
One "proscriptive" condition sets a Dec. 31, 2014 deadline for the closure of the Pender Harbour landfill, but Whyte said the SCRD expects to close the site earlier, perhaps in the middle of 2014, based on a revised site analysis.
Other conditions require the SCRD to compile inventories and submit landfill closure plans and status updates by specified deadlines.
Lake gives the SCRD until the end of the year to submit a plan implementation dispute resolution procedure and 90 days to establish a plan monitoring advisory committee "or a suitable alternative" to ensure public involvement during the plan's implementation phase.
Lake also recommends the SCRD "establish a strategy to limit and ultimately eliminate open burning as a waste disposal option so as to reduce the impact of smoke emissions on the regional airshed."
Roberts Creek director Donna Shugar asked if the directive also applied to backyard burning and the committee passed a motion seeking clarification from the province.
The strategy, Lake said in his letter, should aim to ensure a consistent approach to open burning among local governments in the region and should also "establish links with the Sunshine Coast air quality management plan development process currently underway."
"This is not a condition of the approval. It's a recommendation," Whyte said. "They're asking us to do something that we can't manage. I'm glad to see it came as a recommendation and not as a condition."
The SCRD began working on the new plan in 2009 and the board adopted it in fall 2011.
