BY CRAIG GILBERT
It?s a complicated task making sure Greater Sudbury?s population understands how to throw out the trash.
And according to members of city council, manager of waste management, Chantal Mathieu didn?t do them any
favours with her report in last Thursday night?s council agenda.
Mathieu prepared the report for council for information only.
?This is a Gordian knot that goes into a garbage maze that turns into an enigma,? Ward 5 councillor Austin Davey said. ?The policy should be ?if you?ll bring it there, we?ll take it, because we?d rather have it in the dump than in the ditch.??
Ward 4 councillor Ted Callaghan said the more complicated the policy is, the more garbage will end up in various ditches and bushes across the City of Greater Sudbury.
?Half the stuff you see in the ditch people can put out beside their house and the city will come and pick it up for free,? he said. ?We had a public meeting (on garbage and landfill sites), only eight people came. How do we get the message out? Sixteen changes? We?d be lucky to have people understand two of them.?
The motion passed by council approved 16 recommendations from the Technical Steering Committee and directed staff to prepare a follow up report for the incoming council.
It essentially sent four of the recommendations to the public review phase mandated by the Municipal Act.
The first recommendation would reshape the tipping fee into what members of council such as Dave Kilgour (Ward 4) thought it was in the first place.
Under the current system, if you bring a load of less than 100 kilograms of residential waste to the city dump, you aren?t charged a tipping fee. If your load weighs more than that, however, you are charged for the full weight, not
just the amount over 100 kg.
Mathieu said in her report pro rating the first 100 kg of garbage will cost the city about $400,000 annually.
Davey brought to council?s attention the fact that several companies are in the habit of trucking their trash to
Michigan, where tipping fees are cheap enough to make the transportation costs worth it.
He was told the city should reduce the tipping fee from $72/tonne to $60/tonne. A public input meeting on that topic is scheduled for Dec. 16.
Davey said the city could be losing as much as $3 million every year for lost business at the dump.
The motion carried by council added the four recommendations requiring public input meetings under the Municipal Act to the Dec. 16 meeting.
Ward 1 councillor Gerry McIntaggart and Ward 6 councillor Mike Petryna called again for less trash and more recycling.
?Take a look at your garbage bags, everyone,? Petryna said. ?You don?t have to phone me, just look at it ? 95 per cent is recyclable. Put it in the blue box, people.?
McIntaggart said we need a long-term garbage plan.
?If they?re willing to ship this garbage to Michigan, let them,? he said. ?It?ll cost millions to cap the dump and get a new one.?
He said Greater Sudbury can expect to hit the wall like Hamilton and Toronto, where garbage disposal has become a problem of epic proportions, unless the stream of trash going into the landfill is thinned.
?To reduce our fees to suckhole for garbage just doesn?t make any sense.?
Deputy mayor Louise Portelance was one of several councillors to remind everyone to consider the cost of cleaning up the garbage that is popping up at all ends of the city.
?Since the tipping fees, there?s garbage everywhere,? she said. ?It isn?t in the bush, it?s on private property.
How are we going to pay for this??
She asked public works general manager Don Belisle, who didn?t have a set answer.
?I have no idea, but in our opinion, there is no more garbage in the bush than there was before the tipping fees,? he said. ?But the technical steering committee recognizes this is an issue.?
Ward 1 councillor Eldon Gainer disagreed.
Just three days ago, he said, a city sander had to swing out to avoid several tires dumped right on the road. Those tires, he said, are still there.
?Is there more garbage in the bush and at the sides of the roads?? he asked rhetorically. ?You bet there is. Anyone who says there isn?t can come for a ride.?
Beslile said if council wants to take garbage off the levy, the only way to pay for it is to introduce a bag tag system. Tags would be sold by the city for something like $2 and every bag of garbage that goes into the dump would have to have one.
That isn?t a concept new to council, Ward 2 councillor Lionel Lalonde said.
?We had this debate and were told how the people of the city feel about this,? he said. ?We voted 11-2 to maintain the policy as it is.
?We need enforcement. [Some] cities have a reward of $500 for identifying litterers. We need to think about this.?
Lalonde said there needs to be more days throughout the year when residents can drop off their trash for free.
