Waste Management Committee agenda includes a few shockers

Imagine if you were a Metro Vancouver politician.

On top of all the work you do governing your own city, you are responsible for oversight of a regional utility with an annual budget of nearly half a billion dollars.

You fulfill this duty by attending monthly meetings of one or more committees, such as the Waste Management Committee. The Waste Management Committee oversees the solid and liquid waste utilities provided by the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District. These utilities account for over half of the total spending by the regional district ($278 million in 2009).

Earlier this month, you received an agenda package for the October Waste Management Committee meeting (October 14). It is 254 pages in length.

Buried in this package (Item 5.1) is a 108-page report summarizing your committee's Programs and Priorities for the coming year.

The report includes some staggering facts. On pages 42-43, you are advised that $1,134,000 will be spent on "Ashcroft Ranch - Operations". The purpose of this expenditure is to "continue the traditional agricultural use of the Ashcroft Ranch in order to preserve the ecological heritage, protect and enhance the sensitive grasslands communities, and improve agricultural productivity".

GVS&DD bought this ranch in 2000 to build a new landfill –a project that was shelved in January 2008.

How many politicians–to say nothing of their citizens–know that we are spending over a million dollars a year to operate a ranch? At this rate, we have spent more than twice as much operating the ranch as we originally paid for it ($4.5 million).

That is for a scrapped landfill project. On pages 53-54, we read that Metro Vancouver must spend $19,361,000 to "maintain ISO 1401 certification" of the Burnaby incinerator and to "complete test trials of a dry treatment system for bottom ash".

That second cost is apparently on top of a $630,000 expenditure on page 39 for "Trial post-processing of bottom ash and use as a higher value product", "Secure alternative disposal site for stabilized fly ash", and "Trial post-processing of fly ash and use as a higher value product".

What a heavy burden we impose on our elected officials. I spent most of the holiday weekend trying to get my head around this agenda package. Surely there is a better way for Metro to work with its board and committees.

Helen Spiegelman is a Vancouver-based environmentalist and blog coordinator. Read more at Zero Waste.