Prince Edward County Council approved recommending that staff pursue an Expression of Interest for third party options and opportunities for organics processing and management.
This comes after a feasibility report to council was presented at their Committee of the Whole meeting on Thursday.
As part of the recommendation, council is also directing staff to monitor for funding opportunities and return to Council in the event significant funding opportunities arise, and that Council direct staff to offer backyard composter giveaways on a biennial basis.
The county had called on the company GHD to evaluate the feasibility of managing source separated organics in Prince Edward County.
The study looked at the environmental, social, technical, and economic factors and potential implications of housing an organics facility.
GHD came back with several options for a facility, with the Sophiasburgh Garage property as its most preferred as it hit all of the key categories.
In order for an organics management facility to be operated by the County, it was reported by GHD to cost an estimated $7,752,000 to achieve 50% capacity with an additional $1,904,000 required to reach 100% of capacity.
This includes a 30% contingency and does not account for some aspects of the work potentially being done by County forces.
County staff suggested in their report that Prince Edward County may be able to partner with third parties to help establish organics processing within the County.
They said that this option may leverage private industry and the County’s strategic assets to reduce or share the cost to establish organics processing capacity within the County and reduce organics management costs.
Staff recommend issuing an Expression of Interest (EOI) to identify any parties who would be interested in partnering and to get a sense for the opportunities out there.
Councillors discussed the recommendation and asked questions into the operations of a hypothetical facility.
Councillor Chris Braney expressed concern about a precedent being set if the County moved forward in this direction, saying he thought the County might be getting into something that he didn’t think they should really be into or supporting.
“It’s the precedent that gets set. How do we set an example or a precedent to say, Well, you did it for him. Why not me?” Braney told council.
“We’re creating something that we might not be able to get out of.”
Councillor John Hirsch meantime said that he was open to exploring all options.
“I think we’re just looking for who else has some ideas about how we can handle this waste,” Councillor Hirsch said.
“It’s costing us $300,000 a year now, chance it may be going to go down and then a renewal of the contract, we don’t know, but what else can be done.”
In a recorded vote, the recommendation was voted in favour 11-1.
The lone opposing vote came from councillor Chris Braney.
The recommendation will be brought for final approval at a future meeting of County council.
