Tsawwassen resident Peter Duffey learned a great deal about air currents during his lengthy career as an airline pilot.

In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, he said that the average wind speed in the Fraser Valley is about five knots. Half the time, it travels in an easterly direction.

However, when the wind speed increases, it is more likely to move in a westerly or northwesterly direction.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a big concern for homeowners. But Duffey suggested that the direction of the wind could become far more important if Metro Vancouver decides to build a waste-to-energy incinerator that would burn up to 500,000 tonnes of garbage each year on land owned by the Tsawwassen First Nation.

“Yes, everybody here is alerted to the fact that [Chief] Kim Baird of the Tsawwassen First Nation has publicly stated that they would like to have it there,” Duffey said.

On Friday (July 30), the Metro Vancouver board of directors will vote on a solid waste management plan that calls for an in-region waste-to-energy facility.

Metro Vancouver chair Lois Jackson has maintained that a waste-to-energy facility would add less than one percent to overall emissions in the region.

When asked if Tsawwassen residents are concerned about the impact of a waste incinerator on their property values, Duffey replied: “Of course. You don’t have to ask that.”¦The other problem, of course, is this particulate will spread over North Delta and Richmond. It is not necessarily going to be confined to Tsawwassen or Ladner.”

Academic research suggests that under certain circumstances, proximity to garbage-disposal facilities can drive down the value of adjacent land.

In 2006, Cleveland State University professor Robert Simons coauthored a paper that looked at 58 peer-reviewed articles dealing with the effects of environmental contamination on real estate.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Simons said that property values suffer a 20-percent drop at the border of a landfill.

When the property is a half-mile to a mile away, land values fall five to 10 percent below the norm.

In the case of waste incinerators, Simons said that the value of nearby real estate could fall over 10 percent depending on whether the land is downwind of the facility and on other factors, such as the amount of truck traffic and the number of birds that might be attracted to the area.

“Let’s assume you’ve got really no odours or smells and you can’t see it, and it’s half a mile away,” Simons said. “Conceivably, you would have minimal impact—what I would mean is under five percent. This assumes there are not trucks coming down right in front of your street with garbage.”

However, Simons cautioned that if there are problems at the incinerator site or if it becomes notorious as a result of an accident, property values in the vicinity could drop 10 to 20 percent.

He also said that if dioxins are found in nearby soil, that could result in a loss of up to 40 percent in value.

Kenneth Acks, CEO of a New York–based real-estate consulting firm called the Cost-Benefit Group, told the Straight by phone that there will likely be a reduction in property values near the site of any new waste-to-energy incinerator.

Acks, who oversees an on-line news feed called the Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News, said that an older-model incinerator could result in reduced property values of up to 15 percent.

“I don’t know studies that have looked at the newer incinerators,” he said. “So that could skew it—I maybe would say from two to 15 percent.”

The Straight has previously reported that the TFN’s 2009 industrial lands master plan includes a possible “state-of-the-art waste to energy station”.

A company owned by the Aquilini family has discussed placing an incinerator on TFN land, according to Metro Vancouver waste-management committee chair Greg Moore.

The TFN joined Metro Vancouver last year, after negotiating a treaty with the provincial and federal governments.

Duffey said he thinks the incinerator is a “done deal” between Jackson and Baird that will help the TFN pay Metro Vancouver for connecting to its infrastructure and sewage systems.

“This would seem like a natural barter situation,” he said.

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.