AFTER INTERMINABLE DELIBERATIONS on management of solid household wastes in Dufferin, it strikes us strange that county council needed a consultant's report to convince it that you cannot take charge of something you don't own, or don't at least have permission to manage.

That said, we must make it abundantly clear that we agree with the principle of creating energy from waste, rather than continuing to bury garbage where at some point in the future it is going to leach into the groundwater and ultimately pollute the aquifer.

We agree with former Amaranth mayor Bob Currie's statement, "that digging a hole to buy garbage is the same technology as used by the ancient Egyptians." Surely we have advanced technologically beyond 2000 B.C., but four of Dufferin's eight municipalities are still burying garbage, and the other four are sending theirs elsewhere to be buried.

Granted, all municipalities have agreed to compost their organics, to recycle the materials that can be recycled, and to encourage residents to take back as much packaging as possible to the source.

But none of that has detracted from the practice of burying garbage in the ground.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, a Dufferin waste management master plan steering committee did consider a system of energy from waste (EFW, at the time). It might have built an incinerator to fire a generator to supply energy to the hospital, but the concept died when the newly elected NDP government ruled against incinerators.

Ontario's last incinerator - approved just before the Liberals of the day went down to defeat - is still operating in Brampton.

Now the current Liberal government wants to reintroduce incinerators to the waste management mix. (We were surprised to hear Premier Dalton McGuinty use the term, as the preferred description of modified incineration is either "gasification" or "thermal treatment.")

Dufferin could have had a plant producing EFW, and possibly qualified for sales of electricity under the Standard Offer Program, but the concept has died because the lower-tier municipalities will not divest themselves of control of their garbage.

Meantime, adjacent Southgate Township is well along in its plans for a gasification plant - simply because a private investor would finance it - and the township has commitments from other parts of Grey County.

It is time for Dufferin's lower tier to give the county control of solid waste management , along with household hazardous wastes and composting. Only then will the county advance into the 21st century.