Council wants answers on recycling

Report ordered about Emterra Environment taking over the contract

Blue box pickup was often late over the last three weeks as a new contractor took over collection of recycling and city council wants to know why — in writing.

On Monday, council directed staff to write a report explaining why the new contractor, Emterra Environmental, was so often late over the first weeks of a new seven-year contract, which started on Nov. 1.

Coun. Dean Pappas brought the motion forward to councillors on Monday, saying he wanted “a full post-mortem analysis” from city staff.

“Staff will go over what went right and what went wrong, in their analysis,” Pappas said. Not everyone on council agreed that a report was necessary: Coun. Gary Baldwin, the waste management chairperson, didn’t think council ought to ask for a report.

“We know what the challenges are — and we’ve seen exponential improvement, over the last two weeks,” he said.

Coun. Henry Clarke said it’s fine to give a new contractor time to work out early issues, “but we also need to hear: what happened?”

The city has explained some of those delays in press releases: there were mechanical issues with trucks, for instance, and the city ordered Emterra to inspect each blue box and not accept those that are improperly sorted (which occasioned delays).

The city has also stated in a release earlier this month that all issues should be resolved by this week.

Coun. Keith Riel said on Monday he didn’t see why council should demand a report when information about the delays was released by the city as the delays were occurring.

He suggested asking city waste diversion manager Dave Douglas to speak to council instead in public session.

But Cynthia Fletcher, the city’s commissioner of infrastructure and planning, said she didn’t know what she could add in a report or what Douglas might say that the city hasn’t already explained.

That wasn’t good enough for Pappas, the city finance chairperson, who pointed out that the city’s paying $2.5 million annually to Emterra to deliver a service.

“We need to know what happened there,” he said. “Were they (Emterra workers) not ready? I expect them to be better.”

The decision to hire Emterra was made by city staff in February and council never had a debate about it.

James Istchenko, the city’s environmental services manager, said in July that the hiring didn’t need city council approval because the contract was within council’s approved budget.

Previously, the city and county both used the same two firms for recycling: Waste Connections for pickup and HGC Management for processing.

After those contracts expired, the city and county put out a joint request for proposals — and Emterra scored highest on criteria such as experience and cost.

The seven-year contract is worth about $28.4 million, according to a city staff report — although the sale of collected recyclables will be expected to bring in revenues of roughly $10.5 million for the city.