March 3, 2008
Opinion
One man’s garbage ...times 500,000
RICHARD PIKE
At last ‘guesstimate’, just less than half of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians live in rural communities, much less populated than the Stats Canada standard of 10,000.
Outports, our smallest rural communities, mustering under 10,000, separates them more from the larger centres, like Corner Brook and Grand Falls-Windsor, which with their added catchment areas hold the bragging rights as the official large centres outside the Avalon Peninsula. Of note, good decisions on amalgamation show Conception Bay South as a standalone Stats Canada rural community.
Our historical rural communities, small to very small outports, are the building blocks of those that grew and gained in number. From these settings, rural living still offers many advantages, and as known by most, positive cycles are from time to time punctuated with seasonal crises. Ask any provincial leader from premier Smallwood to Premier Williams.
The year was 1996. The on-again, off-again crisis of the day, and of decade to follow, was the increasing concern over garbage, equally affecting all cities, towns, catchment areas, and small outports. Our outdated garbage, waste, and or refuse handling engorged landfills.
Recycling and composting or lack thereof were at crisis level and the government sent up an alarm to acknowledge the urgency.
Took aim
Policymakers’ Power Points took aim: each citizen shed two kilos of garbage daily. That was a humiliating four and a half pounds for those of us who missed metric conversion in ’68, and we further grimaced under a total imperial deposit of 400,000 tonnes in 240 landfills yearly. The message was loud and clear — hands-on, down-to-earth recycling were pressing imperatives and if we continue to hedge away from that plan our misplaced marvel for rocket science will serve but a few agendas while forgoing the sound advice of taxpayers.
Closer to home, we have the towns of River of Ponds, Hawkes Bay, Port Saunders and Port au Choix in Ingornachoix Bay with a combined population of 2,282 citizens. Our schools participate with 275 other provincial schools in the beverage container refund program established by the Multi-Materials Stewardship Board (MMSB) in 1997 in keeping with their mandate to implement and manage our handling of waste.
We, like other small and larger towns, wish to ratchet up our recycling activity beyond just the beverage program. In reviewing other recycling outlets, their intake of refundable and non-refundable products reflect more clearly the official Waste Management Strategy.
MVP Services presently collects locally and in addition drives the long route to and from assigned communities and recycling substations on the Northern Peninsula between St. Paul’s to St. Anthony.
Again, in Port au Choix, as in other parts of our province, the recycling process needs to expand to an extended list of recyclables. This must be coupled with renewed public and grade school education underlining the present and future effects of poorly managed programs.
Here’s a list
Here is a near-alphabet of tipping points: (a) 1996 government concern, MMSB contract lead to 1997 beverage container return, (b) 2001 throne speech included waste management, Advisory group canvassed the province, (c) very positive public support for recycling and composting was realized, (d) advisory committee’s call-to-action document totally accepted by government, (e) MMSB engaged with a management and implementation plan, (f) MMSB updates in March ’07 were: closure of 80% of landfills, 50% waste diversion, eliminate open burning, eliminate incinerators, replace outmoded unlined landfills with modern lined landfills to control contaminant leach out, on all fronts by 2010, (g) methane gas burn-off project trial at the largest dump in the province, not a superlative accolade for a landfill in 2008, trial and future methane setup cost about $ 45 million, (h) the cost of closing this largest dump $115 million, (i) opening a planned alternative on the Avalon would allow closure of 43 dumps, (j) used tires storage for $ 500,000 yearly, that is our annual debt service charge — unless we plan to send the 1.1 million tires the way of the Stephenville one; to a Quebec company, (k) 20-plus U.S. pulp mills and cement plants burn processed tires for 20 years now, Grand Falls-Windsor pulp and paper looking for ways to save money, (l) May ’07 press release: April ’07 budget omitted waste management, are we serious?, (m) government notified of the omission, good news, corrective action taken, (n) a Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not flash: less than two months after MMSB update for 2010, “NL extends waste management strategy to 2020!”, (o) a near quarter century from the 1996 garbage ‘urgency’ the government is thinking about synchronizing their Debt Clock with a Dump Clock, the Dump Clock, together they can tick away the amount of garbage we continue to dump and a simultaneous LCD can show us the costs of inaction to-date as we listen to the contaminants continuing to leach out into our air, land and fishing areas; eco-terrorism comes to mind, (p) this province likely has strongest winds in Canada and unrivaled ocean wave activity. Wind and wave generated electricity is favourable rocket science; dump the dump gas project and discourage the public from building larger dumps, (q) refuse the refuse should be our outcry, (r) how do you spell eco-tourism …talk about doing it right, and in Atlantic Canada; the Anne of Green Gables’ P.E.I., truly the greenest province in Canada, (s) next month’s Canadian Living tells it well: “P.E.I. waste diversion has lessened landfills by 64%. PEI, in 2004, mandated that electric utilities acquire 15% of its electricity from renewable resources by 2010,’’ that was this province’s stand-up year too, (t) “P.E.I. first place in North America to offer a guaranteed price to anyone producing electricity from wind energy including community wind farms, farmers or small business operators …even homeowners; a private developer is exporting wind energy to the U.S. Northeast….”. Please don’t tell me we are waiting for a ‘windfall’ from the Lower Churchill and (u) the press release describes a modern system by 2020 ...carbon credits is pretty modern now while we mull the direction of our waste management plan; carbon credits could help with an effective make-work project and be sold as such credits that are applicable to new forests when planted and as they grow, tree planting with a green bonus.
Everyone’s obligation
In sum, one man’s garbage and everyone’s obligation must halt the growth of provincial landfills — say no to supersizing. We must redouble our bottom-up efforts and government must be encouraged to waive the divisive population yardstick relegating the smallest communities to continue handling their garbage the old way, dump and burn (P.E.I. smallest province in Canada). The point not to be missed is that close to half of the Newfoundland and Labrador’s population takes part in the beverage container deposit refund program helping everyone to fulfill their recycling obligations. Being seen as a beverage refund service is a laudable source of funding and supports the system well, but until we take a 30-40% bite out of our landfill mass, our program effectively lacks the ambition of our Atlantic neighbours. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, whose programs have been in place provincewide since the mid-eighties and mid-nineties respectively were studied sometime ago by our waste management leadership (did they visit P.E.I.?).
As we will learn over time, if we haven’t from past governments, ground-level action has to be taken now as well-intended rhetoric has a way of burning off until the next crisis. No new mousetraps are needed as we approach the first decade of the 21st century. Regrettably, our ‘half-hour later’ will take close to a quarter century to realize how far behind we are from the Atlantic waste management standard.
Richard Pike lives in Port aux Choix and is a member of The Western Star’s Community Editorial Board.
http://www.thewesternstar.com/index.cfm?sid=114520&sc=30
