CARSTAIRS - Municipalities in the region will soon have to take over operations of their own recycling centres, said Mary Ann Overwater, Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission (MVRWMC) chair.
The commission sent the information out in a recent letter to each municipality stating that as of Jan. 1, 2019 the MVRWMC will no longer be responsible for hauling of the recycling material from the municipal recycling centres.
Overwater said the commission wants the municipalities to take over the operation of the municipal recycling centres. The resolution was made at the MVRWMC's meeting on July 30.
"We will still operate the ones at the transfer station," Overwater said.
The transfer stations are located in Sundre and Water Valley. Overwater said the transfer station in Olds will be closing on Oct. 1 until further notice.
"We haven't quite decided what's happening there," she said. "We also have recycling at the Didsbury landfill. We have full recycling there like paint, batteries, household hazardous waste. The ones operated in the municipalities in their urban areas, they can put anything in there: paper, glass, tin cans. We would contract someone to haul them off."
Overwater said the reason MVRWMC wants to step away from the urban recycling is that it is hard for the commission to track the volume of recycling and where it ends up.
"We're just in the process of going through a budget (which) I think will give us some more information about the recycling centres," she said. "Right now, the commission has decided that the municipalities rather than the commission would be contracting haulers to go to all these places and pick up the recycling."
Overwater said the commission has just hired a new CAO and will be looking at everything the commission does regarding recycling.
"Right now with the situation in China with them not taking any recycling from North America, it's put a strain, certainly, on all the recycling here," she said. "We're really struggling with the recycling and whose job is it to recycle? Who needs to take ownership to make sure recycling is going to a recycling station and is being recycled?"
Overwater said that if you can't track the recycling from when the truck picks it up, takes it to a sorting centre, puts it into a shipping container and it actually goes to a centre that breaks it down and recycles it, you can't really say you're recycling.
"I think that's been a problem over the last few years," she said. "We really need to sit down with our members and have an open and frank discussion on recycling and whose responsibility it is to take the recycling and maintain the recycling stations.
"Some communities are getting help from the county financially to maintain the recycling stations in their locations, others aren't. We have to come up with a fair way of doing recycling."
Overwater said the commission decided it "would be best to look after the recycling at our transfer stations and the municipalities will have to take over their recycling stations and look after their haulers and haul the recycling to wherever they want to take it to."
At the regular council meeting on Aug. 27, Carstairs council and administration discussed the situation and how best to move forward.
"Right now, it's a partnership where they provide contracted service through a third service to pick up material at those sites," said CAO Carl McDonnell.
"They served notice that they won't be doing that after this year. So we'll be having meetings with Mountain View County on the future of recycling centres and how we'll handle those."
McDonnell said the town currently has curbside pickup for recycling and garbage.
"So this is primarily for people with additional recycling or for rural residents to take recycling," he said. "So we'll have to see what that looks like and what those costs will be for us to dispose of the recycled material for those sites."
Carstairs mayor Lance Colby said town officials will be meeting with the county through the inter-municipal collaboration initiative (ICI) regarding recycling.
"We'll discuss how we handle recycling, because if the waste commission isn't going to be responsible for it, how do we handle the removal of it?" he said.
In other MVRWMC news, Michael Weutherick is the commission's new CAO.
"We're pretty excited," said Overwater. "He started September 4. We'll be working on our budget. His business partner, Brian Anderson, will also be coming as CFO. Our contract with the Town of Olds will be finished at the end of September."
Overwater said that both have plenty of experience in their respective positions.
"They'll be working part-time for us," she said. "We feel we don't need a full-time CAO to operate our commission. We're excited."
Weutherick and Anderson both come from Sylvan Lake.
"They are also the CAO and CFO for the South Red Deer Regional Wastewater Commission," she said.
