Garbage incinerator plan burned $7M hole in Peel region coffers before being trashed

Mississauga.com
Jan. 11, 2016
By Roger Belgrave

Peel Region spent more than $7 million on the idea of building a garbage incinerator before trashing the idea last fall.

The now defunct Peel Energy Recovery Centre (PERC) project was abruptly abandoned by Region of Peel Council last October.

According to figures provided by the waste management department, the incinerator proposal burned a $7.2 million hole in regional coffers before it was cancelled.

Environmental screening assessment, technical studies, cost estimation, modelling, project procurement and communications work accounted for the sizable bill.

Waste management officials said some of the work might still be useful on other projects.

The incinerator, for years considered an acceptable part of the region’s long-term waste management strategy, would have operated as an energy-from-waste facility that could annually covert 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes of Peel’s residential garbage to usable energy.

It was expected to cost more than $580 million.

Regional officials had musings about putting the facility on Torbram Road, south of Hwy. 407, where Peel’s existing Integrated Waste Management Facility is located.

The project would have placed a second incinerator inside the borders of Brampton.

Recycling and waste disposal firm U-PAK already runs a facility on Bramalea Road that burns commercial, residential and hospital waste and coverts the energy into steam.

The Region’s energy from waste idea dated back more than four years and was politically palatable with the previous council.

However, after the 2014 municipal election, a changing of the guard apparently brought a change in perspective.

There was concern about constructing a second incinerator in Brampton and the pollution associated with a facility that would attract heavy truck traffic and produce air pollutants affecting Mississauga as well as Brampton.

A majority of councillors voted to toss the project. Instead, council committed to step up waste diversion efforts so that Peel residents are recycling, reducing, reusing and composting 75 per cent of their garbage by 2034.

Reaching that ambitious diversion target will be no small or easy achievement.

“The reality is there’s no municipality that we’re aware of right now achieving 75 per cent (diversion),” noted Waste Management Director Norm Lee.

Last year, the region was diverting about 46 per cent of its garbage from landfill – a target that has taken more than 20 years to reach.

The blue box, green bin and yard waste collection programs account for the vast majority of garbage diverted from landfill in Peel.

When councillors nixed the incinerator, they replaced it with a plan to build an anaerobic digestion (AD) facility that converts organic waste into natural gas.

It’s predicted the bi-weekly waste collection system, introduced last week, will help remove more organics from the waste stream and push diversion rates to more than 50 per cent. Once the AD facility comes online in 2021, officials are hoping rates will rise to 60 per cent as even more organic material is taken out of garbage bags.

Brampton Regional Councillor Michael Palleschi, who also sits as chair of the Region’s waste management committee, was a vocal advocate for cancelling the incinerator project.

This new plan makes the massive and costly PERC operation unnecessary, he insisted.

An AD facility, estimated to cost about $100 million and process 120,000 tonnes of organics a year, is a more effective and economical long-term waste management option for Peel, according to Palleschi.