Clearview shortlisted for organics processing plant
Clearview Township has made the shortlist of places to locate an organics processing facility.
A county-owned property at 1637 Fairgrounds Road North (landfill site 42) is one of seven sites identified by the County of Simcoe as a possible location for its solid waste management infrastructure projects.
The plan is to build local processing facilities for the county’s garbage, recycling and compost. The organics facility would process green bin waste and the materials management facility would process the rest.
The Clearview site is being considered only for an organics processing facility. Earlier this month, county council, as committee of the whole, agreed to proceed with additional consideration to locating both the organics facility and the materials management facility on the same site, which would but Clearview out of the running.
The issue will go before county council on Tuesday.
“Committee did agree to the recommendation, not that we co-locate but that we look at the possibility of co-locating as part of the process of going from the shortlist down to the preferred site,” said County of Simcoe director of solid waste management Rob McCullough.
He said council will consider which is the best site for the organics, the best site for the materials management facility and which would be the preferred site if it were to accommodate both.
Five of the shortlisted sites, located in Springwater Township and Oro-Medonte, could accommodate both facilities.
Garbage, organics, and recycling are currently transferred from a private facility in Barrie. About 10,000 tonnes of green bin material each year goes to a processing facility in Hamilton.
The locations were chosen by a consultant out of 505 possible sites – 302 county landfill site properties and forest tracts and 203 potential willing vendor sites (196 from the MLS search and seven responses to a request for expressions of interest).
The Solid Waste Management Strategy, approved by County Council in 2010 recommended the development of such the facilities as an alternative to developing landfills.
The intent is to process organic waste closer to home to reduce costs in the long term, cut down on haulage, create local jobs, benefit from compost and fertilizer and incorporate more types of waste, such as diapers and pet waste.
The county will be facilitating a community engagement process to give members of the public a chance to comment and learn more. Those meetings are being planned for the fall and details will be publicized when they become available.
Early next year, a final preferred site will be presented to county council for approval.
County officials estimate the capital cost of the materials management facility to be $4.7 million with $1.15 million of funding coming from a grant. The cost of the organics processing plant could range from $10 to $35 million, depending on which processing technology is used.
