CMC sent a letter [ view /download ] to Lora MacEachern, the Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Aug.04, 2023, requesting that the department set up a Technical Steering Committee.
The committee membership would include the CMC along with HRM, the owner of the Otter Lake Landfill as well as Mirror Nova Scotia, the operator, as provided for under the terms of the department’s 2022 conditional approval that permitted changes in the way the landfill functions.
One of the conditions was that compostable waste should not exceed 10 per cent of the total amount of municipal solid waste landfilled by mass. That target has not yet been reached and under HRM’s current plan, the municipality will not attain compliance until March 31, 2026. (See the presentation of Andrew Philopoulos, HRM’s director, Solid Waste Resources, which is also posted on this site.)
Yet the department’s conditional approval allowed the Otter Lake facility to turn off its front-end processor and waste stabilization facility on Dec.19, 2022, thereby eliminating the need for residential waste to undergo further sorting at the landfill. Waste is now trucked directly to a burial cell where it is dumped and compacted. The CMC is concerned by the current state of non-compliance and believes the establishment of a Technical Steering Committee could help alleviate that concern in the interests of the communities that stand to be most affected, particularly those within a five km. radius of the landfill that the CMC represents.
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