Eew! Stinking plant closes, food waste goes to dump
Smell from Burlington Street East facility drifts to edge of Stoney Creek after weeks of complaints
YOUR CAREFULLY-SEPARATED food waste is destined for the Glanbrook dump until the city figures out why its compost plant is stinking up increasingly wide swaths of the lower city.
The city took the unprecedented step of shutting down the Burlington Street East plant Sunday after weeks of neighbourhood odour complaints suddenly exploded to include weekend calls from as far away as the downtown, the edge of Stoney Creek and Gage Park.
Debbie Lapointe is grateful the city is now taking the problem seriously — but also irritated it took so long.
“This started a few years ago, not a few weeks ago,” said the McAnulty Boulevard resident, who began keeping a detailed log book in 2016 of “putrid” odour timelines that she would routinely submit to provincial and city officials.
“It has been more consistent, stronger in the last few weeks, sure.
I’ve had to keep the windows closed most of the time ... But it’s not new.”
The city has already started emptying about 14,000 tonnes of partially finished compost from its “curing” building — a suspected source of the rogue stench — and will not accept any new green bin waste until the malodorous mystery is solved, said waste disposal manager Emil Prpic.
That means any residential organics collected curbside in the days ahead — up to 660 tonnes daily — will go to Hamilton’s only landfill in Glanbrook.
It’s unclear how long it will take to track the source of the stubborn odour, but Prpic expressed hope the shutdown will be “very temporary.”
Modern landfill operators try to avoid taking organic waste whenever possible because the rotting food and yard waste turns into toxic garbage juice that must then be collected to avoid it leaching into the water table.
Prpic said a temporary dumping of organics should not “adversely impact” landfill operations. It’s too early to say what the abrupt closure and shuffling of material will cost the city.
The abrupt shutdown was necessary, despite any financial or environmental consequences, said Ward 4 Coun. Sam Merulla.
“It was a horrendous smell. You can’t live like that,” he said.
“There will be a cost to (the shutdown), you can’t pretend otherwise. But we also can’t violate environmental laws.”
Prpic urged residents to continue separating food waste from trash and putting it in green bins at the curb. But the city will ask residents to put out leaf and yard waste separately — in brown bags, for example — because it can be composted separately in outdoor piles.
It was a horrendous smell. You can’t live like that. COUN.
SAM MERULLA
While your green bin waste will temporarily end up in the dump, the city’s compost plant contractor, AIM Environmental, is trying to line up farmers interested in using the 14,000or-so tonnes of partially treated compost sitting at the plant as a soil amendment.
Ditto for 8,000 tonnes still working its way through processing.
Food waste collected in Halton and
Simcoe, meanwhile, is expected to be trucked to a different compost plant via an agreement arranged by AIM. The Spectator could not reach company president Theo Van Wely Monday.
“The landfill is really a last resort for us,” said Prpic, who added the city has advised the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change of the plan.
The ministry — which identified the city’s plant as the odour culprit just last Thursday — said in an email statement Monday it is still reviewing the situation and has not issued any orders or taken any enforcement action.
While the plant shutdown is a first for Hamilton, other Ontario cities have faced similar challenges.
Guelph’s compost plant, also run by AIM Environmental, had to shut down soon after opening in 2012 to deal with odour concerns.
A compost plant in London, Ont., meanwhile, was fined more than $1 million last year because of several years of odour emissions tracked by the MOE.