IN THE THREE DECADES that Dufferin County has been trying to find a solution to the problems it faces in waste management, precious little has happened beyond a rejection of landfills and agreement in principle on the creation of composting and energy-from-waste facilities.

And unless we’re sadly mistaken, there’s precious little hope that such badly needed facilities will soon be constructed on the 200-acre site that once was to house a county landfill.

Currently, Dufferin’s Community Development Committee (CDC) is getting feedback from the lower-tier municipalities on potential options, including the county’s purchase of the existing dumps in Melancthon, Mulmur, Mono and Amaranth.

The CDC’s first stop was at East Luther Grand Valley, where it won full support for a county takeover of its disused dump as of next January.

The next stop was Shelburne, where the town council has long been similarly supportive of the county providing solutions to the problem posed by the town’s lack of a dump. However, at least some councillors didn’t want to support the county’s acquisition of the four active dumps if that meant Shelburne taxpayers would have to share the potentially high cost of decommissioning them.

The limited purpose of the CDC’s tour of the lower tier is to find whether they would agree to use the thermal treatment plant proposed for the Dufferin EcoEnergy Park (DEEP), and if so under what conditions.

Although a far more important question is whether the councils would support giving the County full control over waste management, such a transfer of authority would require a triple majority vote — not only a majority of votes at county council, but also support by at least five of the eight municipalities, representing more than half the 54,000 residents of the county.

Could such support be achieved? There’s little doubt it would get a majority of votes at County Council and that Orangeville and Shelburne together have a solid majority of county residents, but even if they have support from East Garafraxa and East Luther Grand Valley, they would still need it from one of the dump owners, Melancthon, Mulmur, Mono and Amaranth.

As well, the county needs a sufficiently large waste stream through agreements with at least one adjoining county or region.

It has approached the counties of Wellington, Grey and Simcoe counties and Halton Region but thus far has nothing from any of them beyond a “maybe.”

The committee’s chairman, Shelburne Mayor Ed Crewson, has supported a county takeover of waste management for so long that even he has doubts it will come to pass.

As we see it, the requirement of a triple majority makes no sense in the context of waste management, and in the likely event that all four local councils oppose a county takeover, Dufferin should seek the support of Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones in having Dufferin added to a list of counties and regions where the upper tier has full authority in the field.

Peel Region is already on the list, and currently handles all waste management for Brampton and Mississauga as well as Caledon.

As a result, the region now has a Peel Integrated Waste Management Facility, the largest of its kind in Canada, which houses a single-stream Material Recovery Facility (MRF), a waste transfer station and an organics composting plant, as well as a modern incinerator that handles a significant portion of the output from the MRF.

The MRF can process 130,000 tonnes of blue box material per year, while the waste transfer station can transfer up to 100,000 tonnes of waste annually and the organics composting plant, scheduled to begin operating later this spring, will have the capacity to process 60,000 tonnes of organic material annually. Waste Management of Canada Corporation is contracted to operate and maintain the MRF, and to market all fibre material for a five-year period.

Regional staff is responsible for operation of the waste transfer station and the organics composting plant, as well as marketing all container material from the MRF.

It would seem that in the absence of getting the now-required triple majority, the worthwhile objective of similarly giving authority to Dufferin could be accomplished in one of three ways: by amending the County of Dufferin Act; by changing the Municipal Act to stipulate that upper-tier municipal governments can have full control over waste management if they want it, or by having the provincial cabinet pass a regulation adding Dufferin to the list of upper-tier municipalities with the requested power.

As for the four existing dumps, an immediate takeover by the County would give Dufferin somewhere to dump non-recyclable wastes temporarily until the DEEP thermal facility is up and running.

And if it’s eventually determined that any or all of them pose a longterm liability, all county taxpayers should foot the clean-up bill.