The Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission is doing well in several areas, says Mountain View County Deputy Reeve Angela Aalbers.
“Overall I think things are going really well,” said Aalbers. “A highlight there is we’ve reduced the tipping fee to $95 a tonne hoping that we were going to attract some of our commercial users back to the landfill and right now overall revenue for the first two months is up $25,000.
“We are up 420 tonnes so the people who work at the landfill are saying they are definitely seeing users coming back, so that’s a real benefit for us. We are getting a lot of commercial users coming back.”
The commission is made up of representatives from area municipalities, including Aalbers for Mountain View County.
“For the 2019 budget the commission had that we were still going to accept (hydrocarbon) contaminated waste through our contact,” she said.
“We’ve updated our closure/post closure liability estimates and based on that it looks like we have enough hydrocarbon contaminated soil at the landfill site to last us for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future, so we are not going to be taking in any more hydrocarbon contaminated soil unless companies will bring it in at the same tipping fee as any other waste product.”
That fee would be $95 a tonne, compared with $4 a tonne in the past, she said.
“The waste commission is really looking positive,” she said. “We are getting our financials in order. We are getting our budgets in order and I think we are going to have a really good plan coming into the 2020 budget,” she said.
The new company running the Olds transfer station has done a good job cleaning up the site, she said.
“They did a really good job on that so the liability the commission was concerned about (at the site) is no longer there," she said.
The new company would not deal with the stockpiled agricultural plastics at the site, she said.
“So the waste commission has cleaned that up,” she said. “It cost roughly $10,000 of staff time to clean that up and then it cost roughly $26,000 of tipping fee to put it in the landfill. So all that ag plastic eventually ended up in our landfill.
“That is a total cost of $36,000 and the board believes that Mountain View County should have to pay for that $36,000 because it has come from our residents. I’ve alerted administration that a letter will be coming forward to our council for discussion.”
Aalbers also reported on a recently attended waste water commission meeting.
“I think that probably the biggest and best thing there is we are moving forward with hiring an interim contractor to operate and maintain the waste water line,” she said.
“The handover (on recent construction) is going to be July 9th between the water commission, the waste water commission and our new operator. They are going to be able to come in and then have a couple months' handover.
“The costs are looking very favourable so it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a huge cost increase and there is an opportunity for a cost decrease.”
There was concern that the new operator doesn’t have a 24-hour manned operation, she said, “but in feedback from our CAO, most of the waste water commissions do not have a 24-hour manned operation and they just have an alarm type system, and the waste water commission currently has that so there was no concern from our CAO in moving towards that kind of operation.”
Other councillors also made reports during the recent council meeting.
Coun. Greg Harris said he recently attended a Village of Cremona council meeting.
“They have taken another step in the potential development along Railway Avenue,” said Harris. “Change it from municipal reserve to village land.”
Coun. Duncan Milne said, “We’ve finished up the site visits we were doing with Mountain View Seniors' Housing. It was pretty informative about some of the buildings that are coming into our possession. I was quite impressed with the bones of the buildings.”
He also reported on the recent Agricultural Service Board meeting.
Coun. Al Kemmere said he was disappointed to hear about the agricultural plastic being landfilled.
Reeve Bruce Beattie said the mediator has released her report regarding negotiations between staff and Mountain View Seniors' Housing. The report will be reviewed by both sides, he said.
“We are looking forward to what the outcome of that will be and we will report back as soon as that can be made public,” said Beattie.
