Stephenvile -
Kippens Coun. Cator Best was not impressed with what he heard at a meeting Monday night in Stephenville with regard to plans for waste management in the western region of the island.
"There was nothing brought up here tonight that is any different from what was proposed in 2004, only that its going to cost a lot more now as the longer you wait the higher the cost," said Best, who has been on committees for a western waste management strategy for some time.
Council members representing communities in southwestern Newfoundland, 18 of them in total, were addressed by Gilbert Smart, chair of the Western Regional Waste Management Committee and Wayne Manuel of Bae Newplan, the consulting company handling the study into the new waste supersite for western Newfoundland.
They outlined where they are with choosing a supersite and that the choice has been narrowed down to the top four sites based on a ranking system which included, a number of factors like proximity to community, distance from water bodies, soil makeup, slope of the land, distance from the Trans-Canada Highway and a central location.
The shortlisted sites include two locations on the north side of Deer Lake, one in the vicinity of the Howley turnoff and the other within the boundary of Pasadena.
"There is really no need to do this study when this work was already done," Best said.
He said it was noted an environmental study had to be completed before a site could be chosen. A study which won't be done before fall which may find some of the short-listed sites not viable.
"This is a duplicate of what was done years ago," Best said. "The money they are putting into this study could be better used towards infrastructure for the site."
Peter Fenwick, chairman of the Southwest Coast Joint Council, said a huge problem will be garbage collection fees, especially for the several rural communities that operate through a local service district in the southwest area.
He said as an example, the average cost now in the Bay St. George South area for garbage collection is $50 per year, which will increase to about $170 per year. In his town of Cape St. George, the fees will rise from $98 to $170, while Kippens is shelling about $52,000 a year for garbage collection for 800 households and that's expected to rise to about $152,000.
"It's a huge increase in costs and hard to sell to residents who don't want to end up with big tax bills," Fenwick said. "In communities run by volunteer council members, they're going to be hard pressed to get people to serve on council when the calls start coming about the increases."
