Not everyone’s happy with proposed waste facilities site in Simcoe County
A committee tasked with picking the location of two waste facilities in Simcoe County has narrowed in on their primary location.
The Committee of the Whole has chosen a single site located in Springwater for the proposed Organics Processing Facility and Materials Management Facility. The location is at 2976 Horseshoe Valle Road West, just south of Craighurst.
“I think our staff and our consultants have put forward a very solid recommendation issued, argue the very best site in the County of Simcoe for council to consider,” says County Warden Gerry Marshall.
Some people who live nearby don’t see it that way, and want the new facility located at an existing landfill.
“All kinds of downsides for the people in the immediate proximity,” says Robert Wagner, a Springwater resident. “We are being told the county’s moto is for the greater good. Well the greater good is resting on the backs of a few people.”
The county currently diverts almost 60 per cent of its waste away from the landfill through blue box and green bin programs. That waste is transported to a central location in Barrie, before being shipped out of the region.
County officials believe centralizing these processing facilities could save taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run.
The county looked at more than 500 possible locations, before creating a short list of seven spots.
The recommendation will have to be ratified by county council at their meeting on March 22. Public information sessions on the report are planned for April 19.
Springwater Township top pick for organics processing facility
Barrie Today
A county-owned site on Horseshoe Valley Road, between Hwy. 400 and County Road 27, ranked tops in Simcoe County’s analysis for not only for a site for a waste transfer station, but also an organics processing facility that could deal with pet waste from the whole region.
Announced today – about a year after the county began working to find a site – 2976 Horseshoe Valley Road West in Springwater became the county’s “One site, one solution”.
Measuring 207 acres, the site enables the county to mitigate any odours that would be emitted from the plant that will process organics – the meat bones and kitchen scraps that are collected from households in the county’s 16 member municipalities.
Because of the size of the site, the facility would not have a residential or business neighbor within half a kilometre of the processing building, the county’s solid waste management director Rob McCullough said. He explained the facility would occupy about 11 acres well set back into the site, so there’d be lots of room for buffers.
The Springwater site also has easy access to Hwys. 400, 26 and 27, and while now county organics are shipped to Hamilton, the county could determine what route(s) trucks would go, in a bid to mitigate traffic impact.
Leave a Reply