Site search for proposed county organics sorting plant readies for shortlisting

Requests for Expressions of Interest (REOI) for private landowners to have their properties considered as a possible site for Simcoe County’s proposed organics sorting facility, closed on Friday.The next step involves the County’s Procurement Department in tandem with the Solid Waste Management to develop and present a high-level report to Committee of the Whole, tentatively scheduled for June 23. The report is expected to detail the REOI process, the number of submissions, and how the process will move forward. If that schedule remains, the report would be posted on the County’s web site one week prior, on our about June 16.

“Evaluation of both public and private sites will again ensure a comprehensive process and that the most robust site is selected. Existing County-owned sites within the search area will consist of open and closed waste facilities, County forest tracts, and vacant lots that are currently undeveloped. There are expected to be over one hundred potential County sites for consideration,” according to a previous report prepared by Stephanie Mack, Special Projects Supervisor. “Privately-owned sites will also be considered alongside County-owned sites. …It is anticipated that if any of these site(s) move forward to the short list, an Option to Purchase Agreement will be extended to the property owner(s).”

CFB Borden, and the cities of Barrie and Orillia, are not included as hosting candidate sites, though they could become end users.

The proposed sorting facility would handle materials collected in curbside green bins, and could expand in the future to include pet waste and diapers. Currently, organic materials collected within Simcoe County (approximately 25,000 tonnes annually) are transferred to AIM Waste Management Inc. in Hamilton, at a cost of $108/tonne processing and approximately $30/tonne transfer and haulage (by County).

The Guelph Organic Waste Processing Facility, which opened in September, 2011, is a working model Simcoe County is eying.

It’s a 30,000 tonne per year in-vessel facility which contains a tipping floor, pre-processing equipment, several in-vessel composting tunnels, a final screening line and an enclosed compost curing line. The total plant occupies an area of approximately 1 ha (overall Guelph site is approximately 11 ha), is in proximity to residents, and occupies a space that previously held a first-generation composting facility.

Public input will be a key part of the next phase following the site shortlist reveal. Based on a best case scenario, a new plant could be open and operating in 2019. It’s estimated cost is upwards of $30 million.