Swedish incinerator 'junket' assailed
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A Metro Vancouver trip to Sweden to study waste management is being denounced by one critic as a costly junket that will steer local politicians towards incinerating garbage instead of finding better ways to reduce waste.
Four Metro directors – West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, Vancouver Coun. Heather Deal, Delta Coun. Scott Hamilton and Surrey Coun. Linda Hepner – will spend seven days in Sweden starting Sunday, at a total cost to taxpayers of $33,500.
Helen Spiegelman of Zero Waste Vancouver questions why politicians here need to become experts in waste technologies and why a trans-Atlantic trip is needed to get informed.
"There's been a lot of these junkets," she said.
The May 23-30 trip, organized by Swedish officials and the Canadian Urban Institute, focuses on advanced waste-to-energy plants that turn garbage into electricity or heat and are being studied for possible use in the Lower Mainland.
Metro said the trip is needed as regional politicians will soon make critical decisions on whether and how to spend billions of dollars on up to six new waste-fired plants that would treat garbage as a resource. Sweden is considered a world leader in the field.
Spiegelman, an ardent foe of waste-to-energy, argues building incinerators would be a mistake that will thwart more intensive efforts to reduce garbage in the first place, through measures such as cracking down on excessive packaging.
She said the immense cost of building the plants would lock the region into a requirement to feed them with waste, instead of recycling it or eliminating it in the first place.
"When you make a capital investment like they're talking about in building a facility to manage waste, you rely upon steady flows of material coming into that to make the economics work," Spiegelman said.
"This is the Achilles' heel of waste-to-energy – it's a big dragon that has to be constantly fed."
Metro aims to have new plants built here by 2015, replacing the Cache Creek landfill, which closes in late 2010. The region would export up to 600,000 tonnes a year of waste to the U.S. in the intervening years.
A steady stream of companies and consultants pitching new waste-to-energy technologies have been lobbying Metro officials and politicians for the past two years.
"There's a very cozy relationship between the waste industry and the professionals on our staff who procure their services," Spiegelman said.
She sees the Swedish trip as an effort to bolster the case for a high-tech incinerators and part of a trend to give politicians "tutorials" to "coach" them on the merits.
Metro Vancouver directors will tour the Tekniska Verken waste-to-energy plant in the Swedish city of Linkoping that incinerates 400,000 tonnes of waste per year to produce 1,000 gigawatt-hours of power. It's billed as the country's most advanced waste-fired plant.
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Although most of the new technologies promise to be green and clean, detractors are unconvinced, especially air quality advocates in the Fraser Valley who say the airshed there can't handle any more pollutants.
Surrey Coun. Linda Hepner, vice-chair of Metro's environment and energy committee and one of 24 Canadian participants, said criticism of the trip is unwarranted given the "significant decisions" facing the region.
"I'm anxious to learn," Hepner said. "I really want to know more about energy plants as part of the solution."
Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, who has previously visited Sweden on behalf of Metro to study waste technologies, also defends the trip.
"It's very valuable," he said. "It gives the visitor an opportunity to see something that does work."
Trasolini previously spearheaded a proposed waste-to-energy plant in Port Moody that would have made his city a local leader, but the proposed partnership with Ottawa-based Plasco was shelved by council after local opposition.
The Swedish trip takes Metro directors to Stockholm and four other cities.
Besides stops to visit various waste-to-energy plants and recycling operations, the tour promises a look at facilities that tap biogas from garbage and sewage to heat local buildings and power buses, taxis and garbage trucks.
Participants will also tour a plant in Helsingborg that uses wood pellets imported from B.C. as fuel to generate electricity and heat.
The cost is listed at $6,500 each – including the economy flight, six hotel nights, meals and local travel by bus and train – but that price didn't include airfare to Toronto or per diems paid to directors by Metro Vancouver.
Waste management committee chair Marvin Hunt asked the four directors to closely study air quality impacts, costs and fees of the sites in Sweden and to note how plants fit into local neighbourhoods as well as the local geography.
More international trips planned
Metro Vancouver plans to spend more than $100,000 this year to send local politicians on trips for what it calls "global engagement and learning opportunities."
They include:
• $21,500 to send two directors to the Nov. 12-14 United Cities and Local Governments World Council (UCLG) meeting in Guangzhou, China. Metro chair Lois Jackson and Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan both hold seats on the UCLG.
• $17,600 to send two directors to Copenhagen, Denmark June 2-4 for the UCLG executive bureau meeting, in conjunction with the Local Government and Climate Change Leadership Summit on there at the same time.
• $12,500 to send one director to Barcelona, Spain Nov. 11-13 for the International Regions Benchmarking Consortium meeting entitled Creativity and Talent in an Urban Environment.
• $13,600 for two directors to tour affordable housing sites in England and Sweden in the fall.
• $5,600 to send two directors to represent Metro at the ICLEI World Congress, a global association of local governments embracing sustainability. This year's trip is considered a bargain because it's happening in Edmonton – in past years it's been as far afield as Cape Town, South Africa.
• $10,000 for a director to participate in an international exchange trip through the Plus Network.
• $33,500 for the trip by four directors to study waste-handling in Sweden.
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