City council tabled two motions regarding biosolids at its regular meeting on Jan. 27 so councillors have more time to clarify their wordings.

The motions are ultimately intended to stop other communities from disposing of their biosolids in Merritt and to network with other local and regional governments to support their attempts to do the same.

Both notices of motion — one by Coun. Mike Goetz and the other by Coun. Linda Brown — were originally made at the Jan. 13 regular council meeting.

They came back up on the agenda for the Jan. 27 meeting for voting, but council decided to postpone accepting or defeating either of the motions until they are re-worded.

They are expected to come back up to be approved or defeated at the Feb. 24 regular council meeting.

Council has a committee of the whole meeting on the subject of biosolids slated for Feb. 10 with members of the Friends of the Nicola Valley group, which is opposed to biosolids, and the local composting firm Good Earth Company, which currently processes the City of Merritt’s biosolids within city limits.

Goetz said he wanted to tweak the wording of his motion so as to stop other communities from dumping their biosolids in Merritt’s city limits.

“Any biosolids that are not from the city of Merritt should not be being spread on the fields inside the City of Merritt. They should be going to our Good Earth Company to be dealt with there,” Goetz said.

His idea was that any company looking to process biosolids inside the city’s boundaries would require a permit from the city as well as public notice and signs posted on the property for a prescribed period of time.

Goetz said ideally, he’d like to prevent other municipalities from using their biosolids in Merritt.

“I basically want to stop the ability for another community to dump their biosolids in this community. That’s what I want,” Goetz said.

City of Merritt chief administrative officer Allan Chabot said whether a municipal permitting process would be respected by the Ministry of Environment, which already does a provincial permitting process under the Organic Matter Recycling Regulation, would remain to be seen.

He said a presentation by a Thompson-Nicola Regional District representative at Monday’s public forum on biosolids demonstrated the difficulty a regional government has in regulating the biosolids process already regulated at the provincial level.

“It’s very difficult for [the TNRD] to regulate things approved under provincial permit,” Chabot said.

However, he said a policy statement that the City of Merritt won’t accept biosolids from outside the city limits might be an avenue council looks at.

Brown said she’d like to break down her original motion regarding the Sunshine Valley into three parts: one to “address and support the efforts made by the Friends of the [Nicola] Valley group,” one to ask the Interior Health

Authority to cease operations at the Sunshine Valley site, and another to lobby the province through the Southern Interior Local Government Association and Union of British Columbia Municipalities.

Chabot said bringing the motions back at the Feb. 24 council meeting will allow them to use information from the committee of the whole meeting and also submit a motion to SILGA prior to that convention’s deadline on Feb. 27.

Because the Sunshine Valley properties where biosolids are processed and are expected to be used are outside city limits and fall under the TNRD’s jurisdiction, council’s stance on the issue would be more of a supportive one, councillors said.

“If we get it through SILGA and get it to UBCM, we’re going to have four of the biggest districts probably opposing this, which is going to be the Lower Mainland and Kelowna because they need to send their biosolids somewhere,” Goetz said. “We not only need to meet with [TNRD directors for] Area M and N, but we also need to start getting the support of the Northern and Central Interior. We need to start building up a group that will stand up with us on the floor and push this through, because we’re going to have a lot of people that are against this because they’ve already planned on voting this stuff down to our area.”

Councillors agreed the issue of biosolids processing and application needs urgent attention, but not hastily-made decisions.

“I think we’re all on the same wavelength here and we want to do something and we want to make sure we do it right, so I think we maybe craft the language [because] we want to get the message out correctly,” Coun. Kurt Christopherson said.