City of Penticton insists compost safe, following an alarming inspection report
None of the sub-standard compost product found by inspectors at Campbell Mountain Landfill last year ever made it into local gardens, says a spokesman for the City of Penticton.
“Regular testing is routine, and when a sample fails for any reason, that pile of compost is held back and not sent off site. If a material ‘fails,’ then it means that it needs to compost a bit longer – compost does not leave the site until it passes a test,” explained Shane Mills in an email.
“When you see test failures, it just means we have kept accurate records and high testing standards.”
The landfill is operated by the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen on behalf of the City of Penticton. However, the city looks after the composting service, which uses feedstock yard waste, wood, biosolids from the sewage treatment plant and other organic matter.
Such operations are tightly regulated under the Environmental Management Act and inspectors from the B.C. Environment Ministry found multiple contraventions during a visit to the site on October 12, 2022.
Details of their findings were laid out in a Nov. 16, 2022, letter to the City of Penticton,
which was just published online recently.
According to the letter, inspectors found at least three instances in which the city’s
composting operation was out of compliance with regulations.
Most striking among the allegations are a year’s worth of test results that showed some compost at the site consistently contained higher than allowable levels of fecal coliform bacteria.
The limit is 1,000 fecal coliform cells per gram of compost. But test results from Campbell Mountain for the period of March 2021 through March 2022 showed some compost produced there over that timeframe ranged as high as 110,000 per gram.
While the B.C. Environment Ministry didn’t penalize the city, the letter states the violations “will be taken into account in the event of future non-compliance.”
Mills said the computer glitch has since been fixed and because only finished product leave the site, “there was no risk to the public.”
“The finding of non-compliance is at the lowest end of the provincial government’s enforcement policy, we were already aware of this, and have actively been working towards a new facility with the regional district which will eliminate the need for this facility,” added Mills.
The RDOS has indeed been working for years on developing a new compost facility on Greyback Road just north of the landfill. However, the site is within the Agricultural Land Reserve and the Agricultural Land Commission has rejected the RDOS’s application for non-farm use.