MLA defends pulling land out of the ALR

farming once the landfill stopsoperating,Dietrichsaid

It’s like EcoWaste is back to square one in its plans to build a large-scale recycling facility

This is how it felt to the landfill’s vice-president of recycling and waste services, Christian Dietrich, as the company figures out how to move forward with plans on its east Richmond site.

After a surprise decision from the province earlier this year to exclude its land from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) despite opposition from Richmond city council

Dietrich met with city staff to figure out next steps.

EcoWaste plans to build a large materials recycling facility on the east Richmond site to recycle about 30 per cent more of the waste that’s brought onsite, with a diversion goal of 65 per cent

But in order for its business case to be viable, it needs time and height a longenough timeframe so its investment is worth it and a higher maximum height to continue burying those materials that can’t be recycled, Dietrich told the Richmond News

Without the latter, EcoWaste will have to start shipping excess demolition waste to places such as Washington State

The city gave EcoWaste six months to file for rezoning

Essentially, the landfill would be rezoned from its current agricultural zoning to an agricultural zoning with certain permissions allowing the landfill business to continue operations.

The city indicated it wants a plan to revert the land to

EcoWaste created such a plan about 30 years ago, something the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) required it to do

“We haven’t changed that strategy, but the city wants more detail,” Dietrich said.

MLA defends exclusion

The BCNDP MLA who represents the riding where EcoWaste is located defended the province’s decision to pull the land out of the ALR, saying it “makes absolute sense”

The decision “has no impact on food-producing land,” said Aman Singh, MLA for Richmond-Queensborough, given the site has been used as a construction and demolition landfill for decades.

Ultimately, however, pulling the land out of the ALR was the ALC’s and province’s decision, Singh said, and the government had to look at the issue on a province-wide basis.

Singh questioned if anyone would want to eat food grown on a former landfill

“That site holds no soilbased agricultural value,” he said. “There’s no reasonable way to remediate that land”

Before the exclusion decision, the company was caught in a regulatory bind when the province changed the rules in 2019 and said properties in the ALR could no longer be used as landfills At that point, EcoWaste had been operating for almost 50 years, but they had created a plan for the materials recycling facility

They asked Richmond city council to allow an applica- tion to go forward to the ALC to pull the land out of the agricultural reserve, but they received a unanimous “no”

It was a few months later when the province made the announcement the land was being removed from the ALR.

Allowing the land out of the ALR means construction companies will have somewhere to deposit their waste, thereby, stopping them from depositing it on viable food-producing land, Singh said

“This ensures no more dumping on farmland,” Singh said

And now EcoWaste can plan its material recovery facility, which they say will double their capacity to recycle, reducing the amount of waste that gets buried, Singh added

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