RYLEY, Alta. – The Village of Ryley doesn’t have the NIMBY syndrome. The garbage that had people in other communities shouting “not in my back yard” has been embraced by Ryley as an economic saviour.
More than 15 years ago, when other prairie communities were looking at more glamorous projects such as ethanol and strawboard production, Ryley saw money in garbage.
“This is what we’ve got to build to keep jobs in the country,” said Charles Magneson, a County of Beaver councillor.
Chuck McBurney, commissioner of the Beaver Regional Waste Management Services Commission and reeve of the County of Beaver, said some of the highest paying jobs in the county are related to the landfill.
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Today, the landfill site on the northeastern corner of Ryley is the largest in Alberta and the ninth largest in North America. A steady stream of garbage trucks bring 150,000 tonnes of garbage a year from Edmonton, about one-third of that city’s garbage.
The County of Vermilion River in eastern Alberta has just signed a 30-year agreement to deliver garbage from the county, four small villages and the town of Vermilion. Beaver Regional Waste is also in final negotiations with the County of Minburn and in preliminary discussions with the County of Wetaskiwin.
The combination of tougher new environmental regulations, cost, liability and few people wanting to live next to a landfill site has made it virtually impossible for small towns, cities and municipalities to find new sites for their garbage, McBurney said.
“A lot of surrounding landowners are opposed to the sites.”
County of Vermilion River administrator Glenda Thomas said the county had trouble finding land that owners were willing to sell as a landfill. It eventually was able to buy one quarter section, which would have cost $110 per tonne to develop, compared to paying $85 per tonne to ship garbage to Ryley.
As well, the quarter section would likely only last about 30 years.
“We saw it as a short-term solution and Ryley as a long-term solution,” she said.
When the county carried out surveys, most taxpayers said they were willing to pay more for garbage to be hauled away rather than have a landfill site in their neighbourhood.
“The surrounding landowners were happy to have the garbage in Ryley.”
The town of Vermilion joined the county and four local villages to ship their garbage to Ryley after it was notified to close its landfill or bring it up to environmental standards.
Forrest Wright, chief administrative officer with Beaver Regional Waste, said it’s not feasible for every small community to build modern landfill sites. It costs more than
$1 million to build a single cell in a garbage dump. Cells are specially designed sites in the landfill that contain the garbage. There are nine cells per quarter section.
At 400 to 800 tonnes of garbage a day, Beaver’s half section will last 50 or 60 years. It is in the process of buying more surrounding land.
Not everyone in Ryley adopted the landfill as a good economic development project. The commission spent more than $1 million and several years fighting local landowners in court. The legal appeals have been exhausted and McBurney hopes buying land from nearby landowners will end the bitter dispute.
“The war has been going on for 10 years,” McBurney said.
Two years ago, Alberta premier Ralph Klein got into the debate when landowners asked for help determining the value of their land. The Premier’s Protocol now requires three appraisals of the land, and the sale price is an average of the three.
Still, some people living close to the landfill continue to resist.
“I’m opposed to it. I’m spending my retirement years beside a nine storey pile of garbage,” said Gertie Mizera, whose farm is south of the landfill and who is one of those who opposed the landfill.
Across the road from the landfill, within the village limits, is Clean Harbors Environmental Services, a hazardous waste landfill.
Between the two operations, McBurney estimates more than 100 full-time jobs have been created from garbage. In addition, the County of Beaver, the towns of Tofield and Viking, and the villages of Ryley and Holden receive almost $1 million in dividends from garbage Ð a welcome boost in a farming area with few economic options.
In the garbage world, capacity is measured in airspace, or the land above and below the ground where garbage can be piled and packed. The Ryley site has 44 million tonnes of airspace capacity. At Ryley, ground level is 685 metres above sea level. The top of the landfill is now 705 m and the garbage can be piled until it reaches 713 m.
Until recently, the site was covered with a thin layer of clay every night to prevent the garbage from blowing away. But the layers of clay and garbage were too tightly packed to allow for the creation of methane gas from the rotting garbage. Now, barley straw is blown over the garbage each night. By 2005, officials hope there will be enough methane to create electricity.
“Once we get harvesting gas, it could be a tremendous profit,” Magneson said.
Carbon credits are another potential source of revenue.
The landfill even helped solve Alberta’s old tire problem. More than 170,000 tires were shredded and used to line the bottom of each cell half a metre thick. The rubber on top of the heavily packed clay acts like weeping tile and drains moisture from the garbage to a settling pond.
Despite the legal problems, Magneson still believes it was a good decision to build the landfill site, especially if methane-produced electricity can be generated.
