by George Le Masurier | Nov 27, 2019
Decafnation archive photo by George Le Masurier
North Island hospital board hesitates to take advocacy role, despite rights and precedent
Jim Abram doesn’t have any doubts about his role as a director on the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District board. Its crystal clear to him, and he’ll be happy to tell you exactly what he thinks.
“Every director on that board was elected as an advocate for their constituents, so as a board, we’re a collective of advocates. How can we walk away from what our constituents want, what they’re telling us to do?” he told Decafnation this week.
It seems perfectly clear to Abram that the board should advocate for health care issues like complete pathology services, but not every director sees it that way.
Abram made a motion at the board’s November meeting to send a second letter to BC Premier John Horgan and the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) reconfirming the board’s “strong support” for maintaining fully functioning pathology services at North Island hospitals.
Provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix did not respond to the board’s first letter of support sent in May.
VIHA, sometimes referred to as Island Health, is attempting to centralize many North Island health care services in Victoria. Earlier this year, it moved all onsite clinical pathologists’ services from the Campbell River Hospital to doctors in Victoria, a change the health authority intends to make at the Comox Valley Hospital next year.
Abram’s motion, which eventually passed, triggered a discussion about whether it is appropriate for the hospital board to advocate on health care issues, and whether the board should expand its interests into other areas of health care, such as facilities and medical services for seniors.
The board discussed this issue at its 2018 strategic planning session and in February of 2019 passed a motion that it recognized “the important role for communities and regions to advocate for health care services and programs through local municipalities and regional districts.”
But several directors said they still aren’t comfortable in a wider advocacy role and that the issue raises questions the board hasn’t yet answered for itself.
Hospital Board Chair Charlie Cornfield, a Campbell River city councillor, was one of those.
“I would like to comment on the business of advocacy,” he said at the Nov. 7 meeting. “Because this board was very clear (in the past) that we deal with acute care. And that advocacy issues around … operational issues are best dealt with by the community itself.”
That makes no sense to Abram, who represents the Discovery Islands and mainland inlets within electoral area C of the Strathcona Regional District.
“That’s an antiquated attitude to what’s going on in today’s world,” he said. “We’re advocates on everything else in local government. We’re there to represent the public. We can’t get stuck on an old concept. It’s habit. It’s historical. If people don’t recognize that things have changed, then there’s a problem.”
However, the board does have a recent history of advocacy.
When VIHA proposed building one regional hospital for the North Island, the board originally supported the idea. But later the board reversed its position and advocated for two hospitals, which caused many difficult and divisive conversations. And the board also took a unanimous vote two years ago for free parking at the hospital and most recently to restore pathology services in Campbell River.
There was enough hesitation among directors about advocating more actively and broadly about health care issues at the Nov.7 meeting that they deferred the topic to a future strategic planning session.
OTHER DIRECTORS WEIGH IN
After the 2018 municipal elections, several new directors joined the hospital board. Decafnation recently asked several new Comox Valley directors serving on the hospital board whether they felt advocacy was an appropriate role.
Courtenay Councillor Wendy Morin said she’s just getting up to speed on the board’s mandate, history and responsibilities.
“I know (advocacy) is a question the board will be exploring. As we pay 40 percent of hospital capital funding, I think we do have some role in advocacy, but I am still unclear as to how broad this should be,” she told Decafnation. “I think there is a problem if we were promised certain services and amenities during the implementation of the new hospitals, and those promises have not been fulfilled. I think we need to investigate and see what role we have in advocating for those.”
Electoral Area A Director Daniel Arbour said the board does have an advocacy role to the extent that it spends millions of dollars on health infrastructure.
He said the hospital board is primarily charged with raising tax monies to pay for hospitals, which “tends to be a lot of money.”
“Those hospitals are nothing without the health services that occur in them, and they are impacted by the “health ecosystem” as well,” he told Decafnation.
“While I would not argue for health care operations to be downloaded from the province, to me it is clear that we are a natural channel for local constituents to bring forward concerns and opportunities for improving health delivery. There are also questions as to whether we should be involved beyond just hospitals. Those questions may be explored at our strategic session next year,” he said.
Comox Councillor Nicole Minions said she thinks the 23-member board representing over a dozen diverse communities, should take an advocacy role, especially in extraordinary situations like the centralization of services, such as pathology, “that could negatively affect the health and care of our communities residents.”
But she doesn’t think the board should step into the operation of the two campus hospitals.
“However, as our taxpayers pay 40 per cent of capital costs, it is important to ask questions, listen to concerned residents and advocate to our province to find the right healthcare solution,” she told Decafnation. “As a council member in a community with an average age over 50, health care is important to our residents.
Abram says advocacy is “what we’re here for.”
“Our constituents don’t get to meet face to face and talk with VIHA or government officials, we do,” he said. “I can’t in good conscience go to board meetings and not advocate for the public.”
CAN HOSPITAL BOARD’S LEGALLY ADVOCATE?
The Comox Strathcona Hospital District has historically operated on the presumption that its only, or at least, primary role is to fund select capital projects.
By Oct. 31 of every year, the hospital board advises VIHA of its recommended annual funding allocation for equipment or project under $1.5 million in the next year, subject to final approval of its budget on March 31.
Then, by Jan. 31, VIHA tells the hospital board how they will distribute spending of those funds by equipment and projects.
The board also considers funding major projects proposed by VIHAS that cost more than $1.5 million, before finalizing its tax requisition for the next year.
That appears to comport with the BC Hospital District Act (1996), which states the purpose of regional hospital districts “is to establish, acquire, construct, reconstruct, enlarge, operate and maintain hospitals and hospital facilities. And it further requires boards “to exercise and perform the other powers and duties prescribed under this Act as and when required.”
And the Act goes on to state that the letters patent incorporating a district under this Act must specify the following: the powers, duties and obligations of the district in addition to those specified in this Act,” and “other provisions and conditions the Lieutenant Governor in Council considers proper and necessary.”
The Act does not address the role of advocacy by a board, neither requiring it or prohibiting it, although the Act does, perhaps oddly, include “operate” as one of the board’s purposes.
WHAT DO OUR LETTERS PATENT SPECIFY?
On Dec. 8, 1967, Lieutenant Governor George Peakes signed the original letters patent that created the Comox Strathcona Hospital District. Dan Campbell was the Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance at the time.
Section 9 of that document states that the duties and obligations of the hospital district include those in the hospital act, but also:
“… These Letters Patent, and in addition the District shall establish a Regional Hospital Advisory Committee as soon as possible. The said Committee shall, when requested by the Board, review the hospital projects proposed by the boards of management of the hospitals in the district and recommend priorities and revisions thereto if deemed necessary, and shall also recommend regional programmes for the establishment and improvement of hospitals and hospital facilities in the District for presentation to the Board and to the British Columbia Hospital Insurance Service for Approval.”
To date, the hospital board has not established an advisory committee.
But Section 9 does seem to open the door for a wide range of health care advocacy.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
by George Le Masurier | Nov 7, 2019
BC Premier John Horgan helped break ground for 126 new publicly funded long-term care and hospice beds to be built by Golden Life Management Corp at Cliffe Avenue and 29th Street in Courtenay. The event was unrelated to the regional hospital board meeting | George Le Masurier photo
Hospital district board debates advocacy role, doesn’t back off on retaining NI pathology
Should the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District advocate for health care services on behalf of its constituents? Or is the district’s role limited to funding 40 percent of selected capital projects proposed by the Vancouver Island Health Authority and levying appropriate taxes?
That question arose at this week’s meeting of the hospital district board during debate about whether to send a follow-up letter to Health Minister Adrian Dix. The minister has not responded to a previous letter that advocated for maintaining onsite clinical pathologist’s services in the North Island.
At the direction of the CSHD board in April, Chair Charlie Cornfield wrote to Dix and VIHA’s board Chair Leah Hollins. In that May 3 letter, Cornfield called removing onsite clinical pathologist’s services “yet another reduction in health care services for communities in the northern region.”
“On behalf of the CSRHD board, I am requesting that Island Health revisit and cancel the contract with VICPCC for laboratory services and … request that Island Health retain and expand, with appropriate funding, pathological laboratory services at the North Island Hospital campuses.”
VIHA did respond to Cornfield’s letter. They sent Dr. David Roberston to address the issue with the board in September.
Director Jim Abram, who represents the Discovery Islands-Mainland Inlets area, made a motion to send a second letter to the health minister to “reconfirm our strong support” for onsite pathology services and a third pathologist at the Campbell River Hospital, and to “fully utilize our capital investment in both hospitals.”
A reworded motion was eventually passed unanimously but not before several directors questioned whether the board should advocate over what they called “operational” issues.
Board Chair Cornfield said he thought “advocacy around operation issues are best dealt with by the public.”
And Campbell River Mayor Andy Adams, also a hospital board director, said he was “uncomfortable” with the board playing an advocacy role. And Comox Valley Area A Director Daniel Arbour said he had “questions around advocacy.”
But Abram and Oyster Bay Director Brenda Leigh tied advocacy in this case to a capital issue.
“I think advocacy is the best use of our hospital board,” Abram said. “We spent $267 million for fully functional laboratories.”
Leigh added that “when you don’t get a letter back in eight months, it’s time to knock on doors.”
In the end, the directors did not back off the advocacy they expressed in their May 3 letter and voted unanimously to send a follow up letter to Health Minister Dix.
The approved motion:
“That the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District write to the Premier and Island Health to reconfirm the board’s strong support for maintaining fully functioning local pathology services at the North Island Hospitals in Courtenay and Campbell River in support of optimum health outcomes for the hospital district and to fully utilize the board’s capital investments at both hospitals.”
The provincial Hospital District Act is silent on the issue of advocacy.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
by George Le Masurier | Apr 5, 2018
PHOTO: Peter Vinall, president and co-founder of Sustane Technologies, says the company can convert solid waste that arrives at a landfill into biofuel, through a process that generates zero emissions. Photo courtesy of The Chronicle Herald
Comox Strathcona regional districts take a step closer to new advanced recycling technologies, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and longer landfill life
Using valuable land to bury our garbage is 17th Century thinking,” according to Charlie Cornfield, a Campbell River member of the Comox Strathcona Waste Management Board’s (CSWM) special committee investigating new technologies.
Cornfield made the comment April 5 in support of a series of motions to move the regional district closer to adopting advanced recycling methods that could extend the life of landfills and turn the community’s waste into sources of energy.
The disposition of household and commercial garbage has become a major problem for municipalities around the world, and B.C.’s coastal areas are not immune.
Powell River and the Cowichan Valley already ship their municipal waste by barge to private landfills in Washington state at exorbitant expense.
The Comox Strathcona region must spend about $28 million every six to seven years to open, operate and close up new landfill sites, a frequency that will escalate when the Campbell River landfill closes in 2023 and its waste is trucked to Pigeon Lake. That’s a cost to taxpayers of more than $300,000 per month.
“We can’t afford it (landfills) anymore,” Cornfield said.
FURTHER READING: Should the north Island bury its garbage, or convert it to energy?
New technologies that employ advanced recycling methods could extend the life of CSWM landfill at Pigeon Lake, near Cumberland by 69 to 160 years, while releasing significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions, according to consultants employed by the regional district.
The CSWM committee voted unanimously this week to invite two technology companies to meet with the board. The two, Sustane Technologies and Waste Treatment Technologies, were the leading contenders from a longer list of responders to a 2017 Request For Information for waste-to-energy technologies.
The committee also voted to ask the Ministry of Environment to explain provincial regulations that appear to restrict when local governments can adopt waste-to-energy solutions.
And the committee also directed staff to monitor the progress of Sustane Technologies first Canadian operation in Nova Scotia and its eight-year-old facility in Spain.
The committee’s actions rejected a recommendation by Chief Administration Officer Russell Dyson to put off further investigation of alternate waste disposal technologies until 2022, when a 10-year update of the solid waste management plan is due.
But there are still outstanding issues.
The 70 percent rule
Ministry of Environment regulations seem to require that local governments achieve a 70 percent diversion rate before getting provincial approval to explore waste-to-energy technologies.
That might mean that 70 percent of all waste arriving at Pigeon Lake from households and commercial sources must be reduced, recycled or reused, but the definitions and details of how the 70 percent figure is calculated are unclear.
The Comox Strathcona operation currently diverts 48 percent of waste, but when the organics composting facility opens next year in Campbell River, that number will jump to nearly 60 percent.
A representative of Morrison Hershfield, a consulting engineering firm hired to assess various new waste disposal technologies, said the ministry’s number “isn’t set in stone.” He said it’s examined on a case-by-case basis.
He said if the regional districts have a plan and is making a good effort toward diverting 70 percent of waste, a move toward newer technologies is likely to get a favorable response from the ministry.
Cornfield believes the 70 percent number was pulled “out of thin air.”
“Where did the 70 percent come from?” Cornfield said. “Our role as a board, as politicians, is to make the case that we’re close enough to move forward.”
Cornfield pointed out that the CSWM operation diverts more than double many other regional districts and that in many countries of the world, such as the U.K., there are no landfills at all.
Buying garbage, he said is a “horrible waste of an asset” that can be reused as energy.
Cost versus greenhouse gases
The Morrison Hershfield consulting study and detailed cost analysis by Comox Valley Regional District staff concluded that “at this time” it is less expensive to continue buying garbage in landfills.
The newer technologies could cost double or triple the amount per tonne spent on landfilling.
The same report, which compared three different WTE technologies, also concluded that if Comox and Strathcona regional districts continue to bury their garbage in the Pigeon Lake landfill, we will produce 821,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) over the next 40-year period.
The worst (highest) CO2e emissions from any of the three reviewed WTE technologies was only 179,000 tonnes.
And one of the technologies would achieve a net reduction of CO2e by -777,000 tonnes. Yes, a minus number, or a positive CO2e impact.
FURTHER READING: WTE discussion missed the GNG point
In other words, by implementing WTE technology, the entire north Island could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from solid waste by at least 80 percent, and possibly by roughly 200 percent.
Landfills are North America’s third largest source of methane, which is 25 times more detrimental to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Risks of the leading edge
The least expensive and most environment-friendly new technology studied was proposed by Sustane Technologies.
Sustane uses an advanced recycling processes that include production of crude oil from all forms of plastic, which it refines into diesel oil fuel pellets. The company builds a mini-refinery onsite.
The problem is that Sustane’s technology, while lauded by scientists, has not been proven, according to Morrison Hershfield. Their longest-running plant in Spain has not consistently operated at a commercial level over eight years. And the first Canadian facility in Chester, N.S. is not yet operational.
The consultant said Sustane’s technology is interesting and unique, but is still experimental.
“It will mature, but it’s not yet proven,” he said.
FURTHER READING: Garbage bags into fuel
But Cornfield said whether its proven or not doesn’t scare him.
“It takes people willing to take risks, otherwise we’d never develop new technologies,” he said. “We have to break this cycle (of burying garbage in landfills) sometime.”
WTE Committee Chair Rod Nichol, representing Area B, agreed.
“There’s little risk for us,” he said. “If the technology doesn’t work as well as we hoped, we still have the landfill.”
Nichol and Corfield believe that Sustane or WTT would build and operate a plant themselves, and the fees they charge back for processing the region’s waste would be lower than what residents now pay. CVRD staff doesn’t share that belief.
Time to amend the long-term plan
CVRD CAO Dyson said putting off further investigation of new technologies now would give staff time to engage ministries and the public about amending the solid waste management plan, and give WTT or Sustane time to prove their technologies.
The ministry of the Environment approved the CSWM Solid Waste Management Plan in 2013, and an amended plan in 2016 to permit construction of a new engineered landfill at Pigeon Lake that will contain toxic liquids and capture methane gas.
Besides the new landfill at Pigeon Lake, the Solid Waste Management Plan calls for environmentally-mandated closure of all other landfills in the two regional districts; building transfer stations in those communities losing landfills; and, adding a methane burners and an organic composting facility in Campbell River that is scheduled to open next year.
Committee member Roger Kishi of Cumberland said he’s “certain we need to continue down the path to new technologies, but he’s not as certain that the potential companies will cover all the costs of construction and operation.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” he said.
What’s next
The whole CSWM board must approve the recommended actions by the select committee at its next meeting on April 19.
FURTHER READING: Provincial ban on plastic bags needed
by George Le Masurier | Jan 15, 2018
This is the first article about problems surfacing at the new Comox Valley Hospital. Future articles will look at issues arising from the planning process, the change in culture and how the lack of residential care beds in the Comox Valley has contributed to these problems.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct the estimated cost of the new hospital originally reported as $350 million. And also to correct that VIHA does not lease the building from Tandem Health, which manages the facility, but that it pays a monthly management fee, and that while St. Joseph’s General Hospital was frequently overcapacity it was not on the hospital’s last day due to an intentional effort to reduce the number of patients prior to the move.
The new $331.7 million Comox Valley Hospital, which sits atop Ryan Road hill on 13.3 acres, looks like a shiny symbol of regional progress and modernity.
But inside the three-month old building, the working environment is not as pretty.
Questionable decisions and compromises made during the planning process have created operational inefficiencies that, when combined with a dramatic change in management culture, have caused a decline in staff morale during the hospital’s first three months of operation.
And yet, not all staff and physicians have had exclusively “unfavorable experiences” at the new hospital.
Our sources say they generally recognize the hospital’s many improvements over St. Joseph’s General Hospital; among them, more comfortable patient rooms, a quieter and brighter environment, leading edge technology and uncluttered hallways. And, it’s new.
But during a two-month investigation, involving nearly two dozen interviews, Decafnation has learned there are concerns about some operations at the new hospital and whether the facility is sufficient to service a growing and aging Comox Valley population for very long.
Our sources say they are not just unhappy about their personal working conditions. They are distressed over the failure of Vancouver Island Health Authority to staff the hospital sufficiently and the excessive amount of money being spent on overtime.
The hospital has been significantly overcapacity since it opened, as St. Joseph’s frequently was during its last years of operation. Yet, CVH was designed and budgeted (staffed) as if it would never have more than the projected number of inpatients.
It appears that planning teams did not take into account the increased size of the hospital and the advance to single patient rooms in the units and the Intensive Care Unit when the budget and staffing levels were set. Those changes require even more staff given the same workload, our sources say.
Overcapacity has caused, among other issues, the cancellation of at least two surgeries, a temporary shut-down of the emergency room and forced VIHA to use areas of the hospital that it had not planned to open for years.
And that appears to have increased the stress felt by many hospital employees, from food service workers to clerical staff to nurses.
Staff say they are frustrated that the hospital’s technology has them “locked down,” making them unable to help out different departments during peak periods, as they used to do at St. Joseph’s. They have concerns about patient care, and are disillusioned by what they see as a lost opportunity to have built a better facility for the community.
And they’re angry that management has not listened carefully enough to front-line workers, or addressed the issues they have raised, in some cases going back years into the planning process.
Almost everyone spoke on conditions of anonymity because they fear retribution from VIHA management.
One support staff member described the CVH working environment as worse than the “toxic” atmosphere reported at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital by an independent analysis in November.
FURTHER READING: Culture at Nanaimo hospital is “toxic,” report
“Every day, I meet someone crying in a hallway,” said the source, who is a current CVH employee. “We’d be worse than Nanaimo (hospital). I’d say 90 percent of staff are unhappy with the new hospital.”
VIHA and local elected officials have a different point of view.
Stressing the positives
Charlie Cornfield, of Campbell River and chair of the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District, which has no operational responsibility for CVH, but funds 40 percent of hospital capital costs, said the new hospital “is as good as it gets.”
“It’s quite reasonable with a project of the size and complexity of CVH to have hiccups,” he said. “It could take years to work these out. Give the system a chance.”
MORE INFO: Comox Stathcona Regional Hospital District
Dr. Jeff Beselt, VIHA’s Executive Medical Director for Geography 1, which includes Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox and Mount Waddington/Strathcona, said workers in other island hospitals are envious of the newsness and cutting edge technology and other features at CVH.
“We have an amazing hospital that we can grow into for decades,” he said. “We have to learn how to use what we have. It’s a long journey.”
Beselt chose not to characterize staff morale as good or bad.
“It varies on who you speak with,” he said. “It takes some people longer to adapt … the process was exhilarating and draining at the same time, for all of us.”
Beselt said the hospital has done non-compulsory “pulse check surveys” to measure staff morale, but would not disclose their results. And he emphasized that “staff well-being is very important to us.”
He acknowledged that supporting staff through such a dramatic change is “a hard thing to do well,” but he said VIHA is making a strong effort. And he recognizes that some people, especially those who came over from St. Joseph’s are “really hurting.”
Cultural change
Our sources also recognized that adapting to new processes and a new employer, which they say is less flexible and so far deaf to their concerns, has exacerbated the operational problems.
St. Joseph’s Hospital was smaller and run like a family or a locally-owned business. CVH is nearly three times larger (428,683 square feet versus 151,975 square feet) and is run like a large multi-jurisdictional corporation, including many layers of management.
Our sources say a major factor in the hospital’s low morale is that staff feel like they’re under a gag order, which prevents them from working through their grief to acceptance of a new workplace reality.
“We feel like we’re not allowed to say we’re unhappy or talk about things we think are being done wrong,” said one medical staff and a former St. Joe’s employee. “And senior leadership — who are probably also exhausted from this project — are not willing to listen.”
Beselt said CVH management is committed to listening. He noted that its newly-formed Quality Operations Committee brings front-line worker issues to hospital leaders.
Several sources said crying was a daily routine. A sign was once posted in a private nook of the building that read: “Crying section: 15 minute limit.” It was a reference to the number of people wanting to use the space.
P3 versus public
And, there’s another factor affecting discontent at the new hospital
St. Joseph’s was a public and denominational hospital, not directly run by VIHA. Comox Valley Hospital is a public-private partnership (P3).
FURTHER READING: North Island Hospital’s project
The P3 arrangement means that VIHA provides the operating funds for the hospital. The building itself is managed by Tandem Health — VIHA pays a monthly fee for this service to Tandem — the private partner, which is itself a consortium of companies. One of those is Honeywell, which is responsible for the building and everything from signs on the walls to safety mirrors for navigation in the hallways.
The public-private partnerships (P3) at CVH has created confusion and frustration, and intensified the amount of change for former St. Joseph’s employees.
For example, simple maintenance issues were previously resolved in-house. Now tasks like getting light bulbs redirected or dimmed are described as an exercise in futility, as hospital-employed maintenance staff has been decimated.
Private companies are responsible for maintenance on the equipment or services they provide, but are routinely slow to respond. And staff is unclear about who to call to fix problems and who is responsible.
Will all of these issues naturally work themselves out over time? Are they just hiccups, or imaginary issues conjured by former St. Joseph’s Hospital employees too set in their ways?
It’s difficult to determine which problems are simple growing pains or a natural resistance to change, which are systemic and which need immediate attention and which can wait.
But all of our sources agreed, the accumulation of scores of large and small problems has created a staff morale problem, not to mention the physical strains of overwork, working short-staffed and excessive overtime.
Next: A sampling of problems, large and small, and how the planning process went awry with errors and compromises.
by George Le Masurier | Nov 9, 2017
Photo: The new engineered landfill that will serve the entire north Island
THE next time you drag your trash bins to the curb, think about what happens next to that garbage.
If you have conscientiously reduced, recycled and reused, you will have sent just a small amount of waste to the Pigeon Lake dump, now known by the gentrified title, Comox Valley Waste Management Center. And chances are good that your trash bin contained mostly plastic packaging.
When it reaches the dump, workers will bury your trash, and everyone else’s, in a landfill and leave it to decompose over the next 1,000 years. During that time, in older landfills, it will leach toxic liquids into the soil and methane gas into the atmosphere.
Landfills are North America’s third largest source of methane, which is 25 times more detrimental to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Not long ago, the Comox Strathcona Waste Management board of directors (CSWM) thought they had so much landfill capacity that it didn’t seem urgent to explore more environmentally-friendly technologies for disposing of municipal garbage.
The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy (ENV) approved the CSWM Solid Waste Management Plan in 2013, and an amended plan in 2016 to permit construction of a new engineered landfill at Pigeon Lake that will contain toxic liquids and capture methane gas.
The new landfill is so big, the size of 11 CFL football fields, that it is projected to hold the entirety of the north Island region’s municipal waste for at least 20 years.
But what happens then, and do new technologies offer a better solution?
Director Rod Nichol
Those are the questions newly-elected Area B Director Rod Nichol started asking three years ago. Those questions led him to technologies that convert waste-to-energy (WTE).
Nichol’s efforts gained enough support on the CSWM board to formally explore the latest technologies that transform undiverted municipal solid wastes (MSW) into energy or recyclable materials. His goal was to reduce the volume of garbage buried in the new landfill and extend its usable life.
On Nov. 28, a special WTE committee, which Nichol chairs, will consider the recommendations of a consultant who has reviewed three different proposals to cope with the north Island’s garbage problem — Eco Waste Solutions, Sustane Technologies and WTT Technology.
It’s anticipated the technology review will answer several questions about waste-to-energy:
Do any of the WTE proposals provide sustainable and environment-friendly solutions? Will they reduce the cost of dumping? Will they undermine the progress of waste reduction programs? And will the provincial government even allow WTE when the north Island diversion rate is still well under 60 percent?
Waste to energy solutions
Two of the three proposals the CSWM board will consider appear to involve some form of burning waste to directly or indirectly produce energy or fuel.
While incineration is common in Europe, British Columbia has only one active WTE plant in Burnaby (built in 1988). And none of the applicant companies appear to have working models in Canada or the United States.
On its website, Eco Waste Solutions promotes burning undiverted residual waste in large incinerators to produce electricity. This would require a tall smokestack towering high above the Comox Valley.
Given that Island Health issued an air quality advisory for the City of Courtenay this week, and ongoing widespread concerns about the effect of wood stoves on people with certain medical conditions, it’s unlikely this proposal would garner much support.
Sustane Technologies’ website says their company has developed the technology to separate plastics from organic material, and to produce biomass fuel pellets and diesel fuel (from the plastics). It does not utilize incineration or any direct combustion.
There are other, less common, methods of turning waste to energy, such as gasification (which produces combustible gas) or pyrolysis (which produces combustible tar or bio-oil).
It’s harder to assess the third applicant, WTT Technology, from its website. The Netherlands company says it integrates mechanical and biological (composting and digestion) treatments in solutions tailor-made for each installation. It claims no harmful emissions, and does not mention incineration.
All three applicants claim their technologies can recover 90 percent of what the CSWM Center in Cumberland currently plans to bury in its new landfill. If true, that would mean the landfill could service the north Island 10 times longer than currently projected, perhaps for up to 200 years.
The technical reports submitted by the three companies and the consultant’s review will be made public a day before the CSWM’s Nov. 28 meeting.
WTE versus Zero Waste
Burning undiverted garbage (trash that can’t be recycled or reused) to generate electricity also produces emissions harmful to the atmosphere. And it makes no difference if the garbage is burned directly or converted into fuel that is burned later.
Buddy Boyd, a director of Zero Waste Canada, said the only real sustainable solution is a Zero Waste world, which he believes is possible without affecting our quality of life.
His group’s mission is “to help individuals, businesses, and governments transition to a circular economy, making the use of landfills, incinerators, and waste-to-energy plants obsolete.”
Boyd said the “so-called emerging technologies are unsustainable scams.”
“None of the proposals for the Comox Valley challenge the community to do better in living a zero waste lifestyle,” he said. “In fact, they do the opposite: They require a guaranteed supply of waste to fuel their operations and pay off the company’s capital costs.”
CSWM Director Charlie Cornfield, of Campbell River, said a zero waste world would be ideal, and to achieve it would require a massive global shift in manufacturing, packaging and education.
“We can’t change society overnight, so what do we do in the interim,” he said? “It’s better than we turn this garbage into fuel than to have it floating around like giant islands in the ocean.”
And, he called landfills a 19th century solution.
“We can’t keep throwing garbage into a hole,” he said. “Waste-to-energy is better, and will save taxpayers millions of dollars.”
Environment ministry policy
Responding to a query from Decafnation, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy sent the following statement via email:
“Current ministry policy supports the 5R pollution prevention hierarchy … whereby waste materials are managed at the highest possible level and waste-to-energy is not undertaken unless all of the higher level options have been considered.
“The hierarchy and current ministry legislation and guidance does not preclude any form of waste-to-energy or incineration but establishes criteria that must be met in order to meet higher levels of the hierarchy instead of disposal.”
Guidance documents for waste-to-energy can be found here.
The province prefers to let regional district determine the best strategies for disposal and managing municipal solid waste.
What’s happened so far
Besides the new landfill at Pigeon Lake, the Solid Waste Management Plan calls for environmentally-mandated closure of all other landfills on the north Island, including the Campbell River landfill; building transfer stations in those communities losing landfills; and, adding a methane burners and an organic composting facility.
The CSWM also asked Nichol’ committee to study waste-to-energy technologies.
CSWM Director Brenda Leigh, from the Oyster River area, says the last time the board looked at WTE in 2010, “we learned that the cost per tonne significantly exceeded the cost of landfilling and that we did not have the volume to make WTE economically viable.”
She noted that the WTE committee has probed other municipalities about contributing their undiverted garbage to a WTE stream.
“But as far as I am aware, this proposal hasn’t advanced beyond talking,” she said.
Nichol says he has spoken to elected officials in other communities, including Victoria. But he doesn’t anticipate volume being an issue as all three companies would scale their operations to the region and its projected population growth.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps told Decafnation, “Without knowing precisely what technology is being considered, I think Director Nicol’s approach to look for innovative solutions to use waste as a resource is commendable. In the 21st century we need to make every effort as local governments to create closed-loop systems and limit waste.”
What happens next
If the CSWM board wants to pursue construction of a WTE plant at Pigeon Lake, it would have to amend its Solid Waste Management Plan again and get a new approval from the B.C. government. That would mean either achieving a 70 percent diversion before approval, or convincing the province to bend on this criterion.
Then regional district staff would have to work out details and negotiate with the company selected to provide the service.
Nichol said he was told this process could take 18 months or longer, but he believes it could be completed more quickly.
How Canada and B.C. rank worldwide
Canadians generate more municipal waste than all other 16 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to the Conference Board of Canada.
We’re the worst performer, producing twice as much waste in 2008 as Japan, the best performer.
British Columbia does better at reducing, recycling and reusing than every province, except Nova Scotia. But we still generate 573 kg per capita every year of un-diverted garbage that must be buried in landfills.
And that’s a far greater amount of waste per person than the new provincial guidelines.
According to the environment ministry’s “A Guide to Solid Waste Management Planning,” which supports regional districts in developing goals and targets in their solid waste planning, there are two provincial targets for 2020/21:
1) Lower the municipal solid waste disposal rate to 350 kg per person per year; and,
2) Have 75 percent of BC’s population covered by an organic waste disposal restriction. The guide can be found here.
