New Westminster has no interest in being home to a wasteto-energy facility, says Mayor Wayne Wright.
Wright, a member of Metro Vancouver's Zero Waste committee, said Metro Vancouver was issuing a request for proposals July 19 to determine who is interested in dealing with the region's garbage.
"We don't have any interest. We don't have any land that we can give them," Wright told The Record. "I am always interested in it because I want to know where it is going and how it's going to be, and if it's on our border, I want to know. Right now, we haven't discussed it in council or anything."
In May, Metro Vancouver issued a notice to landowners that it was preparing to enter the potential site identification stage of a new waste-to-energy capacity procurement process.
In the past, the former Canfor site in the Braid industrial area was suggested as a potential site for a waste-to-energy facility.
"We know that the site in New Westminster was the preferred site," Wright said. "Now it is not up for sale and it's not ready to be used. The port authority, they are the ones that have control of it, not us."
Wright said some business people have already made it known they will be replying to Metro Vancouver's request for proposals.
"The RFP that's coming out is for people that are interested
in doing this. Now there's a whole bunch of them," he said. "I think there's 10 proponents of different methods and means of doing waste to energy. They are in region and out of region. They are towards the valley, south of the river, north of the river and on the island - and we are not in there. New Westminster hasn't had anything to do with it at all."
According to Metro Vancouver, after achieving its waste diversion goal of 70 per cent in 2015 and aiming for 80 per cent by 2020, the region will have about 700,000 tonnes of waste that needs to be managed. The region's garbage currently goes to an incinerator in south Burnaby and a landfill in Cache Creek.
"I can tell you, there will be nobody who knows more about that thing than I will," Wright said. "If it is going to come, if there is interest in it, I want to be fully informed so we can talk intelligently of why we don't want it here or if it's coming, what do we do."
Waste to energy isn't to be confused with district energy, a concept that's being explored for Royal Columbian Hospital.
"I am more interested, quite frankly, in the hospital," he said. "The hospital we have an opportunity there to do district energy.
That's a totally different ball game."
According to Wright, the concept would see energy generated from a nearby pumping station.
"It takes sewage and takes sewage back over to Annacis. It's got all this heat and everything in it. Through the mechanics,
you draw out the heat to give you district energy. It's quite a system," he said. "It stays in the system. It goes through vats and stuff like that. It's the most environmentally sound and costly, but simple, solution. At the end of the day it pays for itself."
twitter.com/TheresaMcManus
