After considering the latest gasification report from MacViro Consultants, Dufferin County Council has placed its thermal processing plans on a back burner, and will concentrate on something it controls - composting.

Although the preferred plan has always been to have composting at the county's 200-acre approved site on Highway 89, council's Community Development Committee will grant an audience to a private contractor proposing a facility on County Road 11.

But that doesn't mean that the concept of local thermal processing has entirely gone up in smoke.

It's simply an acknowledgement that a clear majority of Dufferin's eight lower-tier municipalities aren't ready to give up control of waste management - even though they spent more than 10 years and perhaps a couple of million dollars debating a county-wide waste management master plan, up to the point of securing a certificate of approval (C of A) for a countyowned dump.

Arising out of that 10-yearstudy, the lower tier did give the county control of organic composting. But county councillors of the time were never able to reach agreement on what manner of composting should take place at the 200-acre site the council had purchased as the preferred location for waste disposal.

At county council last week, Shelburne Mayor Ed Crewson, who chairs the committee dealing with garbage, said his committee would concentrate for the time being on organics, and would recommend not pursuing gasification.

Although there was no such reference in the committee minutes, Mayor Crewson said outside the meeting that he had polled all members, and that they were in agreement with the decision.

At the meeting, Amaranth Mayor Don MacIver lauded the decision, and said his township is in the process of approving a site plan agreement for a private local composter who would be able to handle all the county's organics at a site north of County 109 on the Third Line (County 11).

On Monday, Scott Bryck said that his company, Jemev Waste Recycling Inc., has obtained the necessary environmental approvals to establish an in-vessel facility in a now-vacant lot in the industrially zoned area of Amaranth's Third Line.

Mr. Bryck, a biology graduate of the University of British Columbia, is an Orangeville resident and native of the Dufferin area.

The Jemev facility - Headwaters BioResource Centre - is proposed as "a manufacturing facility, not a composting site." He said he describes it that way, as "composting" sometimes evokes images of smelly facilities.

In Jemev's proposal, "at no time is waste, air or leachate exposed to the outside." He produced a diagram of the plant's design, showing a series of ducts, and leachate piping leading back to the compost vessels.

There would be two buildings on the 10-acre site, along with a paved parking lot and a floodwater holding pond.

The buildings would have negative pressure, such that organics would be transferred from from trucks to the vessels without any air escaping to the outdoors in the process, he said.

Surely what goes in must come out? He said the air exhaled from the buildings would pass through bio-filters. "All manufacturing byproducts, including exhaust air, are fully contained in buildings and pipes and never come in contact with the outside environment. All exhaust air and liquids are either recycled or processed on site."

Leachate would be recycled as moisture for the composters.

The capacity of the installation would be 70 tonnes per day. He said the facility "would never take Toronto's waste" but would be capable of processing Dufferin's - including manure.

On traffic, Mr. Bryck doesn't expect there would be more than three trucks a day when the facility is operating at capacity - an unnoticeable number on the Third Line in the vicinity of the Dufferin Transfer Station and Jim Brown Trucking.

What would Jemev manufacture? Mr. Bryck said the product would be "top quality fertilizer and soil products," for which the source of materials and the manufacturing process would be documented.

What are the benefits of such a facility? At capacity, he said, the installation would "divert over 45,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year - the same amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by 18,500 acres of forest or the same as taking 10,000 cars a year off the road."

The facility itself would be built with "recycled" and modified 20-foot shipping vessels, he said "the kind you see on railway cars and flatbed trucks."

These sturdy things, he said, are available in abundance at shipping yards "as we import more from China than we export." So the containers fall into disuse.

He envisions the centre as serving an educational need with respect to climate and other environmental change, "providing a location where children can see positive action and solutions."

Additionally, he said, the facility would offer industrial employment to area people.

Preparation for the project has been under way for more than two years, but that has been mainly to obtain environmental approvals.

Jemev already has bins at both the Amaranth and Melancthon landfill sites, and has been working toward site-plan approval for the Third Line installation.

Mr. Bryck said he would expect to be up and running by this summer.