Reopening Quinn Street transfer station to be considered

City council will consider converting the Quinn Street recycling depot back into a full-blown transfer station as part of its battle against illegal dumping – but doing so could cost plenty of money.

City council voted unanimously last week in favour of Coun. Brian Skakun’s motion to direct administration to work with the Fraser-Fort George Regional District to develop a strategy to reduce the practice.

And in doing so, they agreed to an amendment from Coun. Frank Everitt directing staff to also look at the possibility of handling household garbage at the site once the FFGRD’s lease of the site concludes at the end of April next year.

The idea is to give households within city limits that do not get pickup service an option other than going to the Foothills landfill to dispose of household garbage, Everitt said Wednesday. Prior to 2013, the Quinn Street site had been a transfer station where household garbage could be dropped off but was scaled back to a recycling depot and a drop-off point for yard waste when the FFGRD took over the site.

Everitt’s proposal could clash with a plan to convert the site into a storage facility for road salt. In January, council backed away from a proposal put forward by Everitt and Skakun to reopen a sani dump at the site for that very reason.

The material is currently being stored in piles at the 18th Avenue public works yard but the site is too small and falls short of meeting federal government environmental standards, council was told.

“We do not have any containment for any of the leachate that comes off of those salt piles,” public works director Gina Layte Liston told council at the time.

Constructing a proper facility at the adjacent Quinn Street property is preferred, according to staff, because of its close proximity and “an existing impermeable surface.”

Moreover, other land in the surrounding area costs about $1 million per acre and there are few other sites that would work, council was also told.

On Wednesday, Everitt said the city could at least make the site available for household garbage until work begins on a new storage facility. And he suggested giving his idea a closer look could be worth the effort.

“A lot of times we end up making decisions because we think that we have to do something immediately and when you take a second look at it or maybe a third look at it, if you will, some of those things aren’t quite as drastic as they were first thought to be,” Everitt said.