It appears that delays by consultants working for the federal government mean that Clearwater’s eco-depot will not be completed this fall as planned.
“I can only assume this company must be being paid by the hour,” Mayor John Harwood told Clearwater town council last Tuesday evening.
“It’s been a bureaucratic nightmare for us. We won’t be going ahead with any eco-depots in the region because of this.”
Harwood was reporting on a Thompson-Nicola Regional District board meeting held Oct. 13.
The proposed facility, which would be located at the former Camp Two sawmill site, would replace the Clearwater landfill, which is scheduled to close in the next few years.
Expected capital cost would be about $2 million.
Waste from transfer stations from Little Fort north would be trucked to the Clearwater eco-depot for sorting and shipment.
The goal is to reduce the amount of garbage going into landfills by 30 per cent from 2005 levels.
Once operational, the facility will funnel the waste into five main streams: recycling, refuse, material recovery, share shed (or drop n’ shop) and composting.
The recycle transfer building will be a 70’ x 70’ open-ended structure. It would handle about 40 tonnes of cardboard and 115 tonnes of blue bag recyclables a year. This will amount to one B-train truckload per month.
The refuse transfer building will be a 100’ x 100’ enclosed structure. This would handle 4,900 tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) and 1,500 tonnes of demolition, land clearing and construction waste (DLC) per year. Source separated DLC items, such as shingles, drywall, clean wood, concrete and asphalt, can be processed on-site as part of the material recovery stream,
TNRD staff said last April they expected Clearwater’s new eco-depot to be up and running by October or November of this year.