Landfill partnership unlikely

By Collin Gallant on November 17, 2018.

Solid waste collection proceeds near Sprague Way in south Medicine Hat on Friday. Officials are downplaying the possibility of a deal to operate the city's landfill and a joint Cypress County-Redcliff facility in partnership.--NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Municipal leaders in the region say discussions on possibly operating joint services for residents are going well, but it appears they will pass on the idea of creating a partnership to run a regional landfill strategy.

Two years ago, officials with Medicine Hat, Redcliff and Cypress County began discussing better co-ordination of solid waste collection as a way to extend the lifespans of the two dumps operated by the three municipalities.

A formal study on how operations could be aligned at the city landfill and jointly operated Redcliff-county facility hasn’t been released, but top elected officials told the News this week that the concept likely won’t make the final draft of collaboration talks.

“It looks like we’ll have ours and they’ll have theirs,” Richard Oster, deputy reeve of Cypress County, told reporters after a panel discussion of regional political representatives on Thursday.

During the Leaders Breakfast, which included other local elected representatives, Oster presented a glowing review of ongoing broad talks between the parties.

“When it comes to service delivery, municipal borders shouldn’t be an issue,” he told the audience at the Chamber of Commerce event.

Later, he said a three-party committee made up of administrators and councillors from each municipality was making progress, but that didn’t mean combining programs was assured.

“They’ve all gone in asking what can we do and get done together,” he said. “There are things that we’ll want to do ourselves and that we can do better.”

Recent changes to the Municipal Government Act require neighbouring municipalities to have a Intermunicipal Collaboration Plans complete by 2020.

Neighbouring municipalities must formally discuss how they could jointly offer services, possibly to save costs and avoid duplication, but they aren’t mandated to form partnerships.

Medicine Hat Mayor Ted Clugston has oft floated the idea of cost sharing for recreation facilities and other services, which he says are accessed by county and town residents, who don’t pay taxes in Medicine Hat that cover operating costs.

Clugston said talks involve “shared services: Are their more efficient ways of doing things?

“We’ve actually found out that landfills probably isn’t one of the things we’re going to be looking at. But recreation facilities, fire services?” said Clugston.

“The province, to their credit, has said you need to work together, rather than having silos.”

In terms of garbage collection, the City of Medicine Hat solid waste department suggested in 2016 that greater collaboration could add years to the dump’s useful life and push off costly environmental reclamation and commissioning a new cell.

It suggested that certain types of waste could be diverted to specific landfills or that centralizing recycling efforts would lead to better efficiency and volumes.

Last year, Medicine Hat council approved residential curbside recycling and lower tipping fees for construction companies that delivered sorted loads of recyclable material.

Redcliff council voted town a curbside collection plan last February that would have seen collection costs drop by 8 per cent.