Despite a city push for more construction and demolition waste recycling, Ottawa councillors on the planning and environment committee rejected a rezoning application yesterday for a depot to run such a program.
The amendment sought to allow for the sorting, processing and temporary storage of C&D material on the site. The material would be processed, primarily from residential sites. The project would handle around 200 metric tons of C&D waste a day. Millen Construction was the owner of the proposed project.
Some of the sorted material, primarily wood, would be processed on site with the use of a mobile shredder. Non-recyclable material left would be located in containers and shipped to an adjacent landfill.
There would not be any permanent structure on the site.
Company officials estimate that roughly 200,000 metric tons of recyclable materials from demolition and construction sites around the city are being dumped in landfills each year.
They want to start an operation that would eventually lead to 50,000 metric tons of this material being reused.
The company had received approval from the provincial environment ministry to run the program on the land and received a three-year temporary rezoning permit that would allow for environmental monitoring and testing.
However, despite the support Committee members voted six to four against the idea. Opponents sited a number of reasons for being against the project, including the potential of contaminating groundwater, the effectiveness of the monitoring system, general opposition by residents of the neighborhood.
Opposition to the project noted that while they were in favor of the demolition recycling space, it should be conducted inside the existing WSI landfill site.
Meanwhile, Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess, who represents the ward where the land is located, said that while he had some concerns, he voted in support of the depot because he was willing to approve an "environmental initiative that made sense."
He said after three years, a review would be done, a decision on whether to allow the depot to continue would be made, and he urged his fellow committee members to support the rezoning application.
Last year, city council decided that the provincial government, which controls industrial and institutional recycling, wasn't doing enough. Council instructed city staff to develop programs aimed at reducing the amount of this waste.
After the vote, Knoxdale-Merivale Councillor Gord Hunter, who was among the four who voted for the depot, said he couldn't believe that with the city actively developing recycling plans, the committee would vote to kill such a proposal.
"This is ludicrous," he said. "It's incredible, and I don't know where your minds are."
The idea will be revisited by city council later this month. Ottawa (Ontario) Citizen