Reducing and diverting landfill waste and associated greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is a key objective of Council’s Strategic Plan for 2018-2022.
The Solid Waste Management Strategy and Action Plan, or SWAP for short, is a document that provides Kitimat with a road map on how to achieve this objective.
SWAP was prepared in 2020 with the help of consultants and a Zero Waste Working Group comprised of a broad range of community interests.
Goal 1 of this plan is to maximize waste diversion (zero waste) to conserve landfill capacity.
Goal 2 is to maximize residual waste (garbage) to meet current environmental design and operational standards.
The third goal of this plan is to evaluate harmonizing the District's solid waste management system with the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine's system.
Why Did We Need A Solid Waste Management Strategy?
The current (2020) solid waste management system in Kitimat is deficient with respect to waste diversion and residual waste management services.
Residential Curbside Collection System
Unlike many comparable communities in BC that have implemented one-can limits on residential garbage, curbside collection of recyclables, and to a lesser extent yard and/or food waste collection, our current (2020) garbage collection service still allows households to put out up to three containers of garbage and two bags or bundles of yard waste at the curb every week. Although yard waste is set out separately from garbage, it is still collected in the same truck and deposited in the landfill as garbage.
Residual Management - Kitimat Landfill
The design and operation of our landfill is decades behind how most other landfills operate in BC. The site is operated as a natural control (unlined) landfill in accordance with a Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy (MOE) permit issued November 1975, and subsequently amended in May 1996 to meet the provisions of the 1993 Landfill Criteria for Municipal Solid Waste.
Since the introduction of the 1993 Landfill Criteria, most local governments in cooperation with their regional district, have moved towards closing unlined landfills and replacing them with transfer stations and fully engineered, lined regional landfill facilities. This was recently done in the Greater Terrace area. Best practices in landfill operation also include the provision of weigh scales, improved safety by the separation of commercial and self-haul customers, as well as opportunities for recycling.
In 2016 the MOE updated the 1993 Landfill Criteria to outline new standards and operating procedures to ensure better environmental protection by requiring new landfills and expansion of existing landfills to install liners and leachate collection systems. Our landfill is not in compliance with the 2016 Landfill Criteria.
What Are The SWAP'S Key Strategies And Actions?
- Modernize the residential curbside service by collecting garbage, recyclables, and organics.
- Ban the disposal of food waste from large commercial and institutional generators. (Food waste can be sent to the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine's (RDKS's) composting facility near Terrace instead of taking up Kitimat’s landfill space.)
- Investigate options to divert clean wood waste to a beneficial end use instead of burning it.
- Consider the role of KUTE in Kitimat’s modernized waste management system.
- Upgrade the Kitimat landfill to allow for continued disposal of all waste and consider the alternative option of becoming a participant in the RDKS’s Greater Terrace system, (i.e. Construction of a local transfer system and disposal of garbage at the Forceman Ridge landfill).
