I moved here in the depths of winter. It was dark and drenched in rain, but people spoke of hayfield lawns, of waiting in line to fill their containers, and of the irony of thirst in a rainforest. The overriding frustration is that on this issue the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) is a logjam of inaction. From what I’ve observed so far, the currents of change are indeed meandering. That’s in part because of politics, but also because targets aren’t the same for everyone. One just needs to ask whether the Chapman drawdown should be used after Stage 4 – or at all – to get a sense of the morass.
Not so for another messy problem: garbage.
A very unambiguous target cropped up again at an SCRD meeting last week: 7.6 years – a looming countdown to the Sechelt Landfill’s expiry date. It’s a known known, that number. Which should be welcome news for the politicians with the daunting task of finding the next dump. At least that target won’t change.
Two months ago, Harbour Spiel editor Brian Lee pointed out that the landfill saga goes back to at least 2008, and includes what he called a “suspicious” motion by then Gibsons mayor Barry Janyk to turn the Pender Harbour landfill – which still had decades of life left – into a transfer station. A cost savings of up to 13 per cent pitted southern electoral areas against the northern one (A) and here we are, eight years later, with one less landfill, and 7.6 years to solve a much bigger problem.
At the latest infrastructure meeting, directors voted against reassessing waste management targets that are consistently missed because it seemed to be a waste of staff time. The problem is so urgent, went the rationale, that it’s better for staff to focus on action: SCRD’s new organics diversion programs, for example. It’s worth pausing for a second to appreciate that: Directors are so worried about this fast-approaching deadline, that they don’t think there is time to take stock of targets and reassess the solid waste management plan until it comes up for review in 2021, four years before the landfill is set to close for good.
When it was first made public in February that the landfill would likely close sooner than expected, chair Bruce Milne said there was a “cultural norm” of not dealing with problems head-on at the SCRD.
The start for a plan for siting a landfill is expected to emerge later this fall, just in time for the newly elected board. There are 7.6 years left. Let’s hope the new crop of directors blow this garbage target out of the water.
