Wasting away

Looking west from the former food processing plant on Belleville Road north of Wellington is the former plant’s waste lagoon. Land owner Bob Hunter is hoping to develop an anaerobic biodigester on the site to process municipal waste and convert it to energy.

Changes to slow moving plan disrupting biodigester project

The wheels of municipal planning move slowly. Glaciers slide off mountainsides faster than Wellington works through the update to its secondary plan—that is the document that guides what kind of development should occur in the village and where. The secondary plan is also an opportunity for the province to ensure local rules line up with its current thinking and goals.

Wellington embarked on the update to its secondary plan late in 2009—but then it was already 20 years out of date. So it was a big project. There were public meetings. Visioning exercises. Wish lists were drawn up. Priorities assigned. Angry voices demanded changes. Powerful interests created changes. But then the process slipped into subspace—beyond visibility. A major restructuring at Shire Hall meant the departure of key folks on the file. A sharp drop in building and development reduced the need for an urgent set of new rules.

Last Thursday the Wellington Secondary Plan surfaced again. Only a handful of folks were present to see it rise, if but briefly. One landowner repeated his oft-made argument that no houses should be permitted to be built north of the Millennium Trail until his property south of the Trail is covered with homes.

Another wants the County and its secondary plan consultants to ease up on the rules that currently impede his ability to construct a biodigester waste treatment facility on property on the northern edge of the village.

Bob Hunter hopes to construct a facility that will process municipal waste and other material in an anaerobic digester. The result is biogas that can be used to fire an electrical generator—a source of “green” renewable energy.

Hunter is undaunted by the fact he has never built or operated such a facility. Nor is he put off by the fact that one of the few that have been constructed to process municipal waste, was closed by court order just 10 years after it was commissioned in Newmarket.

But Hunter isn’t happy with revisions to the Wellington Secondary Plan that put restrictions on the land surrounding the existing Wellington dump, environmentally protected land just east of the dump and a former waste lagoon on his property in the same vicinity.

Hunter had hoped to construct the digester plant on land bounded by the lagoon, a proposed housing development, the Wellington dump and County Road 2 (Belleville Road). But the new restrictions severely impact what can be done on these lands.

Most problematicly for Hunter, the environmentally protected land has been extended. He doesn’t believe the land should be classified this way. Further he argues that the municipality ought not be changing what he can do with his property, without compensation.

But mostly, Hunter wanted council members to know he was ready to address their waste management issues in a responsible and green way—even if the municipality wasn’t yet up to speed with modern ways.

“You have been told to look at your waste management practices,” said Hunter. “The general public looks at waste treatment from the point of view that if we are creating it, it is up to us to deal with it. We can’t continue to ship our garbage to other communities.”

Hunter also appealed to council based on the hardship of earning a living at farming.

“When corn is $3.50 a bushel you can’t break even,” noted Hunter.

The municipality’s consultant John Uliana offered to sit down with Hunter to review his concerns.

Former councillor Peter Sztuke wanted to know how council intended to ensure appropriate separation between the biodigester proposed by Hunter and the adjacent housing development proposed by Kaitlin Corporation.

Mayor Peter Mertens assured Sztuke that there are an array of setbacks within the municipal planning authority the County may use to ensure the digester doesn’t conflict with neighbouring homes—when they are constructed.

Councillor Jim Dunlop was more direct.

“I don’t want fumes or odours that will discourage development,” said Dunlop.

Meanwhile Uliana figured there is still about year’s worth of haggling, negotiating and refining the plan with the province before the document is complete. That puts it late in 2014 before the Wellington Secondary plan is completed—literally five years after the development of a 5-year plan.

But Uliana quickly assured The Times that the clock on the expiry of the new secondary plan doesn’t start ticking down until it is enacted. He added that given that so much time had passed since the last secondary plan update—there was much more that had to be done.