EA: Critique of the Waste Disposal Project

Guest Blog by Paul-André Larose, Ph.D., Oshawa, Ontario, CANADA. Submission to Durham Joint Works/Finances & Administration Committee on Tuesday 2007/06/12
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EA: Critique of Reports 2007-J-24 and 2007-J-25 (Waste Disposal Project)

I - Introduction

Members of the Durham Joint Works/F&A Committee and members of the Audience, my name is Paul-André Larose. I reside in Oshawa.

You should know by now that I have a Ph.D. in Physics and that, as a scientist and resident of the Durham Region, I am extremely concerned by the proposal to build an incinerator in the area.

At this point, I should state that I am well aware that some of you take a dim view of people like myself who want to assist BEFORE the shovel gets in the ground. Personally, I would welcome the opportunity of someone trying to assist me on an issue, rather than to reject or ignore it.

For the purpose of this meeting, I will intentionally skip all the known scientific facts that I have previously attempted to articulate about incineration and instead, venture into the world of economic wizardry, i.e. focus on some economic considerations.

Once again, we will see that the NEWS IS NOT GOOD on the incineration economic reality.


II – On Report 2007-J-24

This report stresses that the emphasis will remain on the residential aspect.

Province-wide, the report points out that the waste generation amounts to 14 MTY (million tons/year).

Of this there is 4.6 MTY diverted (presumably recycled) leaving 9.4 MTY requiring disposal.

Of this, some 6.2 MTY are ICI and 3.2 MTY are residential in origin.

This corresponds to 1.1 tonne/year of waste/garbage being generated by each and every resident of this province.

I ask the Works Committee members: do you not feel that it would be better to address the preposterous amount of waste rather than to try to get rid of it through incineration?

Let us put things in perspective and look at what this means at the individual or household level. This corresponds in total (i.e. including recyclable and ICI materials) to 40#/person/week or 160#/week for a family of 4 (or 320# where garbage is picked up every two weeks).

Thus, the two reflections that come to mind are:

1. This level of consumption (and the waste disposal problem that it thus creates) is nothing but OBSCENE.
2. There is twice as much of an issue in the ICI area as in the residential one.

Not only is the ICI waste stream twice as large as that of residential, but much of it is not processed by the Region and its disposal is simply contracted out. There is a need to process this waste in a socially responsible way and thus reduce the overall consumption rate.

Many commercial operators and merchants deplore the lack of recycling capabilities. In fact, I know of a case where ICI recyclables are brought to a residence so as to be put in the “blue box”.

These observations lead to two consequences:

1. the need to address waste disposal issues would be lessened (and thus be much less critical) if we were to address, not only residential, but also ICI generated wastes. There is such a thing as the Pareto principle stating that we should first address 20% of the factors accounting for 80% of the observable. For this reason, the importance of ICI should not be overlooked.
2. the remaining life for the landfill areas would be extended if we adopted a system approach to waste, instead of simply trying to make the result of our wasteful consumption go away through landfill or incineration.

The province-wide landfill capacity available is shown to be between 126 to 141 million tonnes. Is this not true that this should remove the urgency assigned to year 2010?

Is it not true that we have some time to properly address the issue and need not join into the incineration stampede?

In other words, do you not think that there is ample room to address the issue at the source, rather than to build an INCINERATOR to get rid of this blatant display of wastage?


III – On Report 2007-J-25

This report makes a rather disturbing statement: it asserts that “York could not make a commitment at the present time sufficient to retain a 50% ownership level in the project”.

Is this is a mild way to say that Durham Region, after having looked long and hard to find a partner in this venture and thus reduce its financial exposure, is now being asked to foot most of the bill, practically as if it were alone in this venture?

Is there not a little of tokenism in the small ownership that York contemplates?

Would such a small ownership on the part of York not transfer the economic burden entirely to the Durham residents?

Is it not accurate to say that while York would limit its exposure to about $17 – 22 Millions, Durham would possibly be on the hook for $130 – 175 Millions, whereas it was previously limited to $125 Millions in the case of the 50-50 arrangement?

In addition to the capital cost, would it not be exact to say that the processing of a lower tonnage would increase the operating cost, as previous studies have demonstrated, and thus make incineration still more expensive?

Thus, is it not true to say that Durham would end up with the financial risk, the health problems and part of the York garbage and ashes?

Is it not true also to say that this is NOT a very smart move on the part of Durham Region on the basis of economics, in addition to all the other previously outlined arguments which militate against that big “landfill in the sky” resulting from incineration?

Given this financial reality, would it not seem highly improper for this Region to send a delegation to Europe to “study incinerators”?

How many taxpayers’ contributions will it take to pay for a trip of questionable value?


IV – Recommendations

Truly, the economics of the proposed incinerator do not make any more sense than the scientific ones.

For this series of reasons, I hereby request the Durham Joint Committee to put the incinerator concept to rest and start dealing with the garbage issue in a way that addresses the source of the problem, rather than its manifestations.

This is somewhat akin to drug use and misuse; one can use drugs to kill the pain, i.e. the manifestations, without really resolving the reason for such pain or one can instead address the root cause of the malaise, i.e. the source.
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Executive Summary

The financial implications of the project are such that incineration should be viewed as a flawed project both from the financial point of view as from other previously discussed aspects such as Public and Environmental Health.
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