The City of Campbell River will not stand in the way of a provincially-approved plan to accept asbestos at the Campbell River landfill.
Potential roadblocks were knocked down in a recent report from city staff that cleared up concerns floated by some Campbell River city councillors in recent months.
Coun. Charlie Cornfield raised the alarm at a May 23 council meeting that if the landfill goes ahead with accepting and handling hazardous waste, that it could potentially change the operating description and put the landfill out of compliance with the site’s zoning.
But in report to council, Drew Hadfield, the city’s transportation manager, said that’s not an issue.
“Staff have reviewed the zoning of the Campbell River Waste Management Centre on Argonaut Road,” he said. “The zoning is I-P 4, where landfill operations are permitted in accordance with the Environmental Management Act.”
Meaning the actual materials going into the landfill are not explicitly laid out, rather the zoning speaks to the operation being carried out on the property, in this case a landfill.
Staff also took back its original concern around ground water monitoring.
“Staff reviewed the Guideline for the Canadian Drinking Water Quality (chemical and physical parameters) and found that asbestos is not required to be tested within these standards,” Hadfield said. “Based on the review of the Guidelines for the Canadian Drinking Water Quality, the previous recommendation from staff for further information…is no longer considered necessary.”
Staff had earlier recommended to council that it request the Comox Strathcona Waste Management Service – which operates the landfill – provide the city with its annual ground water sampling reports, which are done at monitoring wells on and nearby the landfill, to ensure there are no changes in the quality of water associated with the disposal of asbestos materials.
Council, at its June 6 meeting, simply received Hadfield’s report as information. That was passed on to the Comox Strathcona Solid Waste board which met last Thursday but does not meet again until September.
The solid waste service is hoping to tentatively have the necessary bylaw changes, which will acccommodate the handling and disposal of asbestos and asbestos containing materials, in effect by Oct. 1.
The service is proposing a tipping fee for asbestos of $250 per tonne, which based on an estimate of receiving 175 tonnes of asbestos per year at the landfill, would translate to $44,000 in revenue.
Those figures are based on the fact that in 2015, between 125 and 175 tonnes of asbestos and asbestos containing material from the Comox Strathcona Waste Management Service was disposed of at the Victoria Hartland landfill – the only landfill currently accepting out-of-region material.
Once the program is implemented, the Campbell River landfill will be able to accept up to 240,000 kilograms annually of hazardous waste asbestos in designated disposal sites, as per the province’s approval.
@CRMirror
kristend@campbellrivermirror.com
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