This is great news, if it ever gets implemented. At least the money is there. Now, local NIMBY opposition must be overcome. This is local, sustainable thinking at a state level. Bravo!
Source: Montreal Gazette
On Monday, Ottawa and Quebec gave $215.1 million to Montreal, Laval, Longueuil and the South Shore regional municipality to build compost treatment centres. Montreal Island municipalities will add another $79.9 million for its centres, while Laval will kick in $56.9 million.
The question now is where the facilities will be built…
As for the Montreal Island, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay launched a preemptive strike against “not-in-my-back-yard”-ism Monday by reminding suburban mayors and Montreal city councillors that four potential sites were identified in the island-wide waste-management plan, which the agglomeration council unanimously adopted last summer. It called for four compost-treatment centres, two in the centre of the island, and one each in the west and east ends.
Tremblay said that towns and boroughs have until June to submit potential sites in industrial areas for four compost treatment centres – two closed facilities that will convert garbage into biogas and compost, and two semi-closed facilities that will create only compost.
Construction could begin in 2011, with all centres up and running by 2014, said city spokeswoman Valérie de Gagné. The first to be built will be located in the central part of the island, she said. Montreal will also set up a sorting facility in the centre of the island where regular garbage will be taken in order to remove any recyclable or organic materials before it goes to a landfill site.
“The challenge is going to be to convince people to use a brown bin,” Tremblay said, adding that it took years for people to get used to sorting recyclable materials out of their garbage. “We have no choice – we have to go ahead with this.”
