An application has been submitted to the ministry of environment for an industrial wood waste landfill north of Lund.
At the December 8 qathet Regional District (qRD) planning committee meeting, directors reviewed correspondence from Jeff Levine, a strategic management consultant, who indicated that 1265209 BC Ltd. intended to submit an application to authorize the discharge of industrial wood waste residue from sawmills and former sawmill properties that have industrial wood waste residue on the land. The land on which the landfill facility will be situated and the discharge will occur is located at 14445 Sarah Point Road.
According to an environmental protection notice signed by Levine, the maximum rate of industrial wood waste residue discharged from this facility will be 375,000 cubic metres over a 15-month period. The operating period for this facility will be 8 am to 5 pm, five days a week. The refuse discharged will include sawdust, wood chips, hog fuel, end cuts of wood less than one metre in length, dredgings of wood waste, sand, gravel, rocks, inert waste and inert cover material.
According to the notice, all material will be non-hazardous and covered through intermediate cover material until the landfill is completed, and it will be covered with a low-permeability cover on top and soils and vegetation will be replanted.
Electoral Area B director Mark Gisborne said he’d received a Facebook message and someone was asking about more information. He said that was the first he had heard about the proposal. Gisborne asked if staff had any additional information about the proposed landfill.
qRD planner Julia Dykstra said this correspondence was merely a notification that the activity was happening. She said typically, there is a code of practice for industrial non-hazardous waste landfill. These code of practice guidelines usually happen beside an existing mill, she added. In this case, the applicant is applying for a commercial non-hazardous waste landfill that originates from primary and secondary wood processing industries, said Dykstra.
“They are proposing that the wood waste is coming from a mill that has been closed for about 30 years in Squamish,” said Dykstra. “There is no opportunity to locate that wood waste in the vicinity of the historical mill. They are deciding to have a short timeline for the landfill. They have a 15-month waste discharge approval process through the ministry of environment and that is why they have sent us a notification, rather than a referral, because it is not a ministry referral process.”
City director George Doubt said he did some math and it seemed that 375,000 cubic metres is a lot to move in a 15-month period, particularly if looking at a tandem dump truck with a pup trailer. He said that configuration would handle 14 cubic metres in a load, and if trying to move five days a week, over 15 months, it would require 81 dump trucks with a pup trailer up the road every day.
“I was wondering how that was going to happen,” said Doubt. “Are these going to come by barge to Saltery Bay or to the barge terminal in Powell River, or is it going to be transported some other way? It will be pretty interesting to the population in the area.”
Dykstra said the proponents are proposing to barge the wood waste residue to the location because there is an existing crown land tenure dock area, which they would also need to apply to the provincial government to access.
“They are planning on barging it from the Squamish area to the actual location and they are not proposing any road use over the Sarah Point Road at all,” said Dykstra.
The planning committee voted to receive the correspondence.
