The Regional District of Central Kootenay will begin construction this year on the composting facility planned for an old landfill site in Salmo, with completion expected in early 2022.
The largest part of the facility, according to the RDCK’s general manager of environmental services Uli Wolf, is to create a flat piece of compacted land with a lightly paved surface on which the material will be composted in a process called aerated windrows.
The facility will include a building that will house a mixer – a large piece of industrial equipment to mix the various components of the compost, along with various electrical components and blowers to aerate the compost mixture.
Wolf says the facility will be ready for delivery of organic materials from residents of Castlegar and Nelson by early 2022, but not yet for rural residents.
In Nelson, the city anticipates only eight deliveries to the facility per year because the household use of FoodCyclers will reduce the volume of the material drastically. It will be easy to store in households before pickup because it will be reduced in volume and dehydrated (not smelly).
Most or all of the cost of the counter-top FoodCyclers will be covered by grants from CleanBC and from the federal government’s Green Municipal Fund. The program might also include pickup of yard waste.
Also starting in early 2022, rural residents living on the outskirts of Nelson will be able to deliver their organic material to the Grohman transfer station. Residential pickup in other rural areas is still on the drawing board and will come later, Wolf says.
As for organic waste from business and industry, that also has a later start date, Wolf says, but the RDCK and the city are both starting to plan for it.
Businesses such as restaurants and institutions such as hospitals are major producers of organic waste.
“We are rolling out residential and then we are going to pilot commercial,” Nelson’s city manager Kevin Cormack said in an email.
The city has never been involved in collecting garbage and recycling from businesses, industry and institutions, and its future role in collecting organics from those entities is unknown.
The RDCK has received a $1,536,585 grant from the federal and provincial governments to construct the Salmo facility, with the RDCK to contribute the remaining $791,580 in project costs.
READ MORE:
• Nelson will use unique technology to reduce composting costs
• Nelson city council agrees to RDCK composting plan
• Nelson households pilot counter-top organics recycling method
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
