At no capital cost to the taxpayer, Dufferin could have a composting facility at its approved site before the end of 2008.

County council has approved in principle a proposal by Zero Waste Energy Systems to build an anaerobic digester on the county's 200- acre site at Highway 89 and the Amaranth-East Luther townline.

Dufferin has a memorandum of understanding with York Region for a joint composting project. The ZWES proposal would be separate and apart from that, said Warden John Oosterhof.

"This is something entirely different." He said ZWES is a group of individual companies and private investors who are more interested in collecting the gas from compost than they are in producing such as clean compost for home gardens.

The same group is into gasification and hydrogen production. Although the proposed facility could be used by Dufferin, "(the feedstock) could come from anywhere, or it could be commercial (waste) that we don't get into now."

The warden said a section of the county-owned 200-acre site would be cordoned off for the Dufferin/York facility, but the rest of the tract would still be owned solely by the county and could be available for other enterprises such as the ZWES proposal.

The site, purchased by the county as the preferred location for a landfill, is especially attractive as it has already won a conditional Certificate of Approval for waste manage- ment. One conditions for its approval was that the county should have a composter there prior to digging an engineered landfill. The approval was several years ago, when dumps were still in vogue. Now the preference is for various forms of Energy from Waste.

The county's approval in principle for the ZWES proposal means only that the company may proceed with a feasibility study for a 20,000-tonne pilot project, which could be expanded to 100,000 tonnes.

According to the ZWES presentation, the estimated cost of the facility would be about $11 million, all be borne by private investors. ZWES would charge tipping fee of about $60 tonne, and would market the by-products of composting. Dufferin would receive an unspecified rental for the area used by ZWES, and would have access to the facility required.

In the meantime, the county expects to complete its review of responses to its Request for Proposals for the joint composting facility with York, and to proceed from there to complete its plans for a gasification unit prior to the end of 2008.