Dear editor,
It makes me sad to think the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) proposal on rural roadside garbage and recycling collection in Electoral Areas A, B and C has failed the Alternative Approval Process (AAP).
Ten per cent don’t want a curbside waste collection service that would provide a convenient waste management program for residents with increased waste diversion, reduced greenhouse gas emissions as well as reductions in the long-term costs to all of us of the Comox Valley Waste Management Centre landfill. For an estimated $250 annual fee, with no increase in property tax, the CVRD curbside collection would have included biweekly curbside pick up of household waste, recycling collection and a monthly yard waste pickup.
Given a carefully thought waste and recycling collection in areas that no longer have unsupervised recycling drop off centres and no yard waste pick up, the AAP failure makes me profoundly grateful that COVID immunization did not go to a AAP process where anti-vaxxers could scuttle the vaccination program for all those who do want to see an end to the devastating virus.
Our landfill is filling up. The cost and difficulty of finding a new landfill site is a nightmare no taxpayer would want to have to confront. Our roads, streams, woodlands and meadows have become the alternative waste management sites. Plastic waste recycling, which would have been a primary object of curbside recycling, should not be optional in a world where our land, waterways, oceans have become the alternative waste collection sites.
It is my fervent hope that the CVRD is not long in going to a referendum on curbside waste and recycling pickup. I hope the support for this program will, this time, foster a citizens group to promote this important initiative in environmental well being.
Norm Reynolds,
Courtenay
