State of the City: Landfill Expansion

The recent expansion of the Ridley Island Access Road Landfill and the city's goals towards a more sustainable future provided for one of the currents of the State of the City presentation of June 28th.

The larger financial limitations that the City faces for all of its infrastructure was reviewed as part of our Overview of the mayor's presentation.

The opening of the presentation on the landfill by Mayor Brain put some focus on the situation he inherited, as well as the work during his term of office to increase capacity and shift towards a Zero growth strategy.

"Landfill has been another big issue for this community, we have been at a stalemate because our landfill had reached capacity. 

Basically when I came into this position with Council, we were reaching that capacity and we basically were getting full right when we started and there was never really a plan long term about expanding the landfill.

So the landfill has a two part situation. One is waste diversion and actually reducing waste the other is actually expanding the landfill so we can increase capacity for the next thirty,  forty years.

So we've completed that now, it's 100 percent done, it was a thirteen million dollar project.

We also implemented curbside recycling now which has actually been really successful and is starting to really divert waste from the landfill."

How that work by the city will serve to finally tackle some of the demolition and disposal issues made another element of his presentation.

"Now the thing that the landfill has done and that some of the policies that we've done, that to update ... is that the buildings that you see downtown that are sitting there and all of us know they are eyesores. 

And you're wondering ... Why isn't anyone doing about that? Why aren't they tearing down those buildings? Why does this town look like the way it does?

It's because we actually couldn't take those buildings into the landfill and there was nowhere to put them.

And so it's been a timing issue for the community, in that we had to get this done. 

So now what you're are going to see is that we have a variety of buildings and homes that are actually scheduled to be taken down.  

We have a new policy now, buildings have to be stripped to their bare materials and recycled the best they can, we just don't throw a whole building into the dump like we used to.

And so that's going to be a lot more of an efficient cost saving thing for the community. 

Again to Mr. Pucci and his team for brilliantly executing that, it's now another thing that we can finally get the community moving forward for.

But that was one of the reasons why we haven't been able to move forward with the revitalization piece"

Mr. Brain also noted how the city's efforts  plan towards a goal of becoming a Zero Waste community. 

"So that's going to accelerate a lot for this community. The goal is to become a Zero Waste community long term.

So the next program would be to introduce curbside composting a Green Bin long term and that way then you can begin to divert the food scraps and  things like that"

The Mayor also spoke the introduction of the City's new garbage/recycling program and how it shapes the goals of Zero Waste.

"That's why they started with the little garbage cans, which I know has been very controversial to this community.  However, if you want a bigger can, you can call operations and we'll get you a bigger can.

But you know the whole  point is that we shouldn't be producing that much waste as a community, so zero waste is now a new strategy to become a much more sustainable community"

The themes of the landfill and waste solution elements of the presentation can be viewed from the City's Video replay of the Sate of the City Presentation.

The review of the roads notes start at the  29 minute mark

Some of our past items of note on the city's work on the landfill issue can be found from our  Operations Archive and our Major Project articles.

The past themes of Sustainability issues can be found here.

Our Full overview of the State of the City Presentation can be reviewed here.

We also have created an archive of the elements from it, that compilation is available here.

( some of the above images come from screenshots of the video presentation)