Cleaning up

By the year 2016, making a trip to the local dump on the West Coast will be a thing of the past.

That's the hope of the provincial government, who have initiated its Provincial Waste Management Plan, announced in May of this year.

The first step of the initiative to concern the West Coast was the recent announcement of the Western Regional Management committee, a group comprised of citizens who represent the Western region's many municipalities.

Cynthia Downey, a councillor for the town of Stephenville Crossing, and Eric Legge of the Bay St. George South local service district, have been appointed to the Western region's committee.

Dave Denine, minister of municipal affairs, says the goal of the waste management plan is to reduce the number of landfill sites in the province.

"We'll have three main ones in the province on the island portion," says the minister. "There's a significant number of landfills throughout the province and we want to close them down basically and consolidate the waste management in one area."

The plan, which the province hopes to have fully implemented by the year 2020, will decrease the province's some 200 waste sites to around 40. The Western committee will develop a transitional strategy to consolidate existing sites and eventually plan to integrate every waste site in the western region to the one new facility.

Reducing the number of waste sites in the province will take some time, says Minister Denine - and a substantial cost. The provincial government will cover the capital infrastructure of all the waste management facilities and transportation of the various types of waste to the main sites.

One of the western region committee's duties is to research possible funding.

"It's going to impact the cost to municipalities, and what we're [the town of Stephenville Crossing] mostly concerned about is that that cost isn't going to be any more in the long run over what we're paying now," says Ms. Downey. "Hopefully it will be cost effective for all municipalities."

Transporting waste out of town for disposal is something many municipalities are already familiar with. Waste collected in Stephenville Crossing, for example, is taken to a site in the St. George's area shared by the communities of Flat Bay, St. Teresa's, Black Duck and Mattis Point.

Ms. Downey is pleased with her appointment to the committee, and says she looks forward to its first meeting, which as of press time had not yet been set.

"It's going to be an interesting group to be with, because of course we're going from Rocky Harbour and Jackson's Arm right up to Burnt Islands and Cape St. George," she says. "So it's quite a large geographical area that is going to have to come together."

The committee is also comprised of people representing the city of Corner Brook, the town or Irishtown-Summerside, the town of Pasadena, the town of Jackson's Arm, the town of Rocky Harbour, the town of McIvers, the town of Burnt Islands and the Humber Economic Development Board.

These individuals will have to come together to consult the various stakeholders in the undertaking.

"The municipal leaders, industrial, commercial, institutional sectors - anyone who uses the landfill now," says Minister Denine.

The committee will also be responsible for assessing feedback, identifying a single site for the new regional disposal site, and educating the public about the importance of programs such as composting, which the government hopes to implement along with the sites.

"People think they throw things away, and they're out of sight, out of mind," says the minister. "There is a worry, because it's going to the environment. When we're trying to attract people to our beautiful province, we don't need to have landfill sites dotted all across our province, both in Labrador, and in Newfound-land."

The government hopes to decrease the amount of waste being transported to the new sites by at least 50 per cent through composting and the implementation of disposal bans. Regional waste management authorities will be established in 11 zones on the island portion of the province.

Minister Denine says the move to a consolidated waste facility will take time, but with the western committee now in place, plans should move forward quickly to begin to plan for the western region's disposal site.

"I'm very anxious to get the committee up and running, and to establish waste management on the west coast," says the minister.

The Western regional waste site is slated to be operational by the year 2016.