Back in August, Council asked staff for information on costs to increase services provided at the District Transfer Station to a seven days per week service.
Currently, the Transfer Station is open five days a week: Tuesday to Saturday.
The Transfer Station—as the name implies—is not a landfill, but a place where waste and recycling can be dropped off, then transferred to the Bessborough Landfill.
According to a report to council by Jason Bradley, Director of Operations and Infrastructure, currently no PRRD site operates seven days a week. “As the Transfer Station is jointly operated by both the District of Tumbler Ridge and the PRRD,” writes Bradley, “any operational changes will need to be sent to and approved by their Solid Waste Committee and the Regional Board prior to implementing any change.”
Staff came to council with three options: first, he District could operate the Transfer Station Wednesday through Sunday, instead of the current schedule. This would still be five days a week, but would mean the station was open Saturday and Sunday.
Option two would be to open Sunday and Monday, having it open seven days a week. This would mean that there would be two employees working these two additional days a week (at a cost of $1409.24/week, or just under $100,000 once benefits are factored in.) Part of this cost would be covered by the PRRD.
Finally, in option three, the District would open the Transfer Station these additional days during a two week cleanup campaign each spring and fall. “The PRRD currently runs this program for two weeks in June as well as an additional two weeks in October,” points out Bradley. While this would mean having additional staff on hand, the cost could be absorbed in the current operating budget.
It is this last option that appeals most to Council. Councillor Noksana says she is more inclined to go with option three. “We can then monitor what the usage is on the currently closed days before jumping into and adding staff.”
Mayor Krakowka says he isn’t even willing to go that far. “I’m not even saying stay open for two full weeks,” he says. “I think if we do a couple Sundays in the spring and then a couple Sundays in the fall, instead of trying to do the two weeks seven days it gives staff that opportunity to play with that.”
He says the issue of Waste Management has been hotly debated at the PRRD level. “The PRRD does not run seven days a week at any of their transfer stations, and there’s reasons for it.
Councillor Hoffman says he’s open to expanding services if there’s a need, but he thinks that the staff on the ground knows best. “I would suggest that we leave it to staff to manage that. We can give them the extra leeway for a sixth or a seventh day.”
Councillor Gulick says option three is probably the best one to go with at this point. “I would really like to make sure that we keep an eye on it and try and get some feedback from our residents. Like maybe having it closed Monday-Tuesday would be preferable for folks rather than the Sunday-Monday. But at the same time we’re not going to please everybody and I’m okay with that. But I do like to have that option in the in the spring and the fall and see what kind of feedback we get. And I especially like that it can be absorbed into our already set operational budget.”
Councillor Norbury says he would like to see the additional days be recorded separately, to track how much waste is actually being dropped of. “I want to know if that extra day is being used because it’s convenient, or are we capturing that excess waste loss that’s going into the bush? I hear concerns from the community about the waste being dumped in the woods and surrounding areas, and I want to make sure that if we do increase our service delivery, it means we actually capturing that. But we need to have some sort of statistic that is measurable. And however we decide to do that—whether it’s number of people, whether it’s by weight, we have to have some sort of statistic comparing current usage vs the usage those extra days. If we’re seeing, say, 50,000 pounds go out in a week and then we increase the service and we still have 50,000 pounds, we’re not increasing the service, we’re just increasing the days.
Bradley says it would be tough to measure by weight, but it would be easy to count people, as they do have to check in. They could also use a traffic counter, like the kind you see on a highway. “Currently, we are not tracking the numbers. We have done blitzes where we have tracked numbers over a short period. We could track numbers over the course of a month to see what the usage is as a baseline.”
Another thing he’d like to see, says Mayor Krakowka is to have a campaign where for one week, people can put stuff out with their garbage and the District would come and get it.
“Not everybody has a vehicle to be able to get down there,” says Mayor Krakowka. “I’ve seen in other communities where they have a campaign where you can put stuff out on your lawn or your driveway and the District comes around and collects it. Couches or whatever. That’s something to think about as we’re going into budget.”
“I came from Lacombe Alberta, and they did there. They came around with a loader and a dump truck, and it was picked up by the loaders and put into the dump trucks and taken away.”
In the end, a motion was passed to investigate having the Transfer Station open seven days a week for a couple weeks in the spring and a couple weeks in summer.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
