Only a third of costs for responding to odour complaints recovered

Metro Vancouver spent almost $1.5 million responding to odour complaints over the past two years, but recovered just one-third of that cost through regulatory fees.

It is the kind of discrepancy the regional district hopes to remedy when it re-examines its odour bylaw and regulatory fee system this year.

In 2017, Metro Vancouver, which regulates air quality in the region, spent $833,864 responding to and investigating 3,725 complaints about odours. The next year, it spent $654,707 to respond to 4,083 complaints. These costs are strictly related to staff time spent on odour issues.

During that same time, Metro collected $538,994 in regulatory fees from facilities that were the subject of odour complaints.

The majority of the fees came from the Parkland Refinery in Burnaby, because it is a large facility that is authorized for a large volume of emissions. However, the vast majority of the odour complaints were about two composting facilities — Harvest Power in Richmond and Enviro-Smart Organics in Delta.

Metro charges both a fixed fee and variable fees based on tonnes of emissions for facilities that emit air contaminants, some of which may be odorous. Based on a principle of “discharger pay,” the fees are supposed to offset the costs of the regulation and enforcement program, and pay for development of new regulations.

In the case of regulating odour, the regional district has received an unprecedented number of odour complaints in recent years and the costs have ballooned.

Part of the problem, according to Kathy Preston, air quality regulatory lead in Metro Vancouver’s environmental regulation and enforcement division, is that, “We don’t currently charge fees for odorous air contaminants, per se.”

Preston said that when discharger fees aren’t covering the cost of staff time for regulation and enforcement, either other facilities that aren’t the source of complaints are paying for it, staff are pulled away from doing other work, or the difference is paid by the taxpayer.

Fines collected for bylaw infractions are “a drop in the bucket,” said Preston.

That’s why Metro is in the midst of a fee system review and new odour regulations. It is also updating its regulatory requirements for organic waste facilities. With those changes, plus the anticipated closure of Harvest Power and planned upgrades at Enviro-Smart, Preston anticipates the gap between fees and enforcement costs will shrink.

“I expect that the issue, it is going to get better,” she said.