Edmonton council appears to favour new $215-million composting facility

Edmonton may spend $215 million to build a new composting facility to replace the troubled one that has been mostly offline since October2017.

City council agreed at a meeting Tuesday to look at building a new facility.

Four alternatives were presented to city council in a report last week.

The proposed composter councillorsappear to favour is more expensive to build, with an estimated cost of $215 million, but has a better expected return on investment, Coun. Ben Henderson said.

The composter would create renewable natural gas along withcompost, he said.

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The facility is expected to last 30 years, the report to council said.

The existing compost facility, built in 2000, would be torn down and the new one constructed on the same site.

The preferred composting technology is anaerobic digestion which uses an airtight container to convertsolid waste into methane and carbon dioxide, otherwise known as bio-gas.

"It's tested in other cities," saidCoun. Michael Walters. "It meets our needs, possibly, pending further refinement in the business case."

Another proposed option called for repairs and upgrades to the existing facility, which has been mainly offline since 2017, when engineers discovered structural problems with the roof.

The roof can't handle the weight of snow, so the facility had to be shut down during the winter.

Council has asked the city operations department to do a complete business case on the favoured composting option and report back in October.

The facility would be one step in moving Edmonton into modern waste management, after the city's once stellar reputation took a beating last year.

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"We rested on our laurels, as a wastemanagement administration for some time," Walters said. "We didn't adapt to new technologies, we didn't recognize the importance of source separation."

• City ready to start collecting kitchen scraps from 8,000 houses in April

The city will also embark on an organics pickup pilot project in thespring.

The goal will be to divert 90 per cent of solid waste from the landfill.

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