Dear Editor,

Re: Herald story May 5 2016 – Merritt may lose biosolids processing plant to Hope.

Being a lifelong resident of Merritt and through the learnings that I acquired through my two terms as the mayor, led me to ask some questions about the front page story published on May 5th.

I have been following and researching all that has transpired since early fall of 2014 in regards to biosolids and ways to deal with this substance. I questioned the idea that a company could just roll into town and ‘poof’ — a facility would go up that would process the biosolids (sewage sludge) and make all the bad that goes with this end-product disappear.

Upon researching the concept of pyrolysis, I found that it is not a proven technology in North America or Europe.  The technology was being tested in Thailand, where environmental rules do not match North American or European standards.

A city in New York state spent considerable tax dollars to build a pyrolysis plant, only to find that the technology had not been proven in the U.S., nor did their residents want to have their taxes or sewage utility go up significantly to cover the cost of building such a plant.

The current test project in Vegreville, Alberta is a mobile plant that will process everything but biosolids.  (www.albertatechfutures.ca)  A mobile plant does not require the same permitting that a stationary plant would.

To give you an example of the process required in B.C. to build a plant that would take bio-solids and turn them into electricity or heat. First, the company would need to find a sizable piece of land that is zoned correctly. Then they would need to find investors that are keen on this particular concept. That could take two to three years. Should the property need re-zoning, add another six months or longer to the process. Then they would need to do an environmental assessment that goes thru the Provincial Ministry of Environment and public scrutiny, which can take up to two years. They would need to order the specialized equipment required, obtain building permits, secure right of ways, perhaps put in services to land, etc.

The estimate if all of the above went smoothly is three to five years. The biomass plant currently being built here in Merritt took over five years from the time Merritt was chosen for the site to when the first shovel hit the ground, and it is coming in at a cost of almost $240 million.

The majority of those investment dollars are NOT British Columbia money — and this is to process WOOD, something that we have been dealing with for hundreds of years.

To clarify and answer some questions I have received or heard about this current biomass plant. It cannot just turn on a switch and begin to burn garbage or sewage sludge. It would need to re-apply for a new environmental assessment, and change over the technology. Again, time and cost would be a huge factor, as well as public input.

In the pyrolysis process, there is an end product of ash, and due to its heavy concentration of toxins, it would have to be trucked to the hazardous waste disposal site east of Edmonton for disposal. We have no such facility here in British Columbia.

If the building of pyrolysis plants were easy and cost effective, would the current activities of composting kitchen waste, yard waste and sewage sludge not be replaced throughout North America already by these plants? Perhaps that is a reason why Emergent Waste Solutions is seeking the financial backing from municipalities, along with contracts such as Metro Vancouver’s sewage sludge disposal.

In Merritt, it has only been since 1963 that we have had a sewage treatment plant to deal with, and originally the rules to operate this plant were not as stringent as they are now. The sewage sludge was taken to a land fill site, buried and forgotten.

It was only in 2005, when the regional districts were required by the province to develop a Solid Waste Management Plan, that it was identified that we could not continue to just fill up the landfill sites with things that could go elsewhere. So began the composting of sewage sludge in 2007 when the plan was adopted by regional district boards.

Kelowna and Kamloops are two composting sites that have incorporated yard waste into the process and have successfully marketed the end product.

During the work up of the Solid Waste Management Plan, the concept of burning sewer sludge was examined, but the cost outweighed the composting cost significantly. Recognizing the difficulty in convincing rate payers that the cost of a burning facility would be the ideal solution, they went with the composting. (See Solid Waste Management Plan on the TNRD website www.tnrd.com pages 13 and E17-23).

So back to my original question: “What biosolids processing plant are we losing?”

Through my researching of Hope’s newspaper and their municipalities website, I found no mention of either Emergent Waste Solutions or their CEO, Kevin Hull. So I went directly to the District of Hope with my inquiry and found that they have only had a preliminary exploratory discussion with Emergent Waste Solutions and no specific location or financial support was asked for or agreed to.  However a private investor group in Hope is working with Emergent Waste and the company may release clarifying info in short order.

Perhaps a more suitable caption for the Herald story should have been  “Company pitching pyrolysis process to Nicola Valley elected officials has moved onto Hope” and not implanted the belief that Merritt was losing something that was never there to begin with.

Susan Roline,  former mayor

City of Merritt, 2008-2014