{"id":3662,"date":"2012-07-03T09:16:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T16:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2012-07-03T14:34:04","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T21:34:04","slug":"crd-looks-for-public-input-on-waste-management-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/07\/03\/crd-looks-for-public-input-on-waste-management-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"CRD looks for public input on waste management planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents of the Capital Regional District (CRD) have until midnight on July 15 to give their input on the region\u2019s waste management plan via an online questionnaire.<\/p>\n

The CRD is currently reevaluating their waste management plan, which was adopted in 1989 and has undergone two revisions to date. They are hoping many residents get involved in the process and feel as though their voices will be heard, according to Russ Winter, CRD senior manager environmental resource manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cA percentage of the public chooses questionnaires as a tool to interact with the process, but there will be more of these types of tools available,\u201d says Smith. \u201cOnce we hone in their recommendations there will be another round of public engagement. So this is just one spoke on the wheel of that engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Eliminating kitchen scraps from garbage is part of the plan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the evaluation process, the CRD will look at existing programs and policies to identify what should be included in the plan\u2019s third revision. The results of the questionnaire will go through a 20-member public and tech advisory committee to move onto the next stage of public consultation, which will include public meetings and other forms of input generating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are held accountable by the committee, who are basically a group of citizens in the region, and we need to prove to the ministry that we were are taking advise from the public,\u201d says Smith.<\/p>\n

But some critics of the process say that the CRD are being shortsighted, perhaps looking for short-term solutions instead of long-term planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking as far forward as possible is important,\u201d says Peter Stephenson, director of the University of Victoria\u2019s school of environmental studies. “And I really think the energy generated from waste management is really important. Instead of just creating sludge and adding huge problems to the ecological system, why not ask what you can do with it? And that\u2019s where they need to look at where we want to be in 40-50 years, and make the decisions based on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waste management has become a hot-button issue in the CRD, and many are wondering what will happen when the Hartland landfill reaches capacity in the next 25 or so years.\u00a0 One initiative is a complete ban on kitchen scraps by 2015 via incentives and surcharges for waste companies, as well as education and outreach for the public. The kitchen-scraps ban is estimated to increase the landfill capacity by another 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaste management impacts people at a household level, so we all live with it day to day and we all have strong opinions,\u201d says Smith. \u201cCombine that with a landfill that has a finite life of 25-35 years, given current diversion rates, and we need to be mindful of the waste we are generating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CRD’s public consultation process will roll out in the next two to three years, and the plan revision could take much longer than that to complete. The speed by which the waste-management plan is progressing is frustrating, says Stephenson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taken an awfully long time to get to set of workable decisions,\u201d says Stephenson.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not sure why, because I\u2019m not tuned into municipal politics, but usually when there\u2019s any big, costly infrastructure that\u2019s paid by taxpayers it becomes political football. And inside that arena there are the people who are going to make money, and those who are going to be affected by it. Maybe that\u2019s why the process is taking so long.”<\/p>\n

Go to crd.bc.ca\/wastenot before midnight on July 15 to participate in the CRD\u2019s waste management questionnaire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Residents of the Capital Regional District (CRD) have until midnight on July 15 to give their input on the region\u2019s waste management plan via an online questionnaire. The CRD is currently reevaluating their waste management plan, which was adopted in 1989 and has undergone two revisions to date. They are hoping many residents get involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}