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MERRITT HERALD FREE
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2015 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
Albas, Scott, rise in aggregate polls — NDP leading nationally 40.2% 29.6%
City taking over Good Earth Company biosolids facility operations The Sunshine Valley Good Earth Company has been purchased by the City of Merritt for $300,000. Michael Potestio/Herald Michael Potestio THE MERRITT HERALD
The City of Merritt is purchasing the Sunshine Valley Good Earth Company biosolids composting facility on Airport Road and will take over the operations of the site beginning November 1. The facility’s assets, including its equipment and biosolids inventory were purchased for $300,000 from current owners John and Kate Anderson. Interim chief administrative officer Shawn Boven said it was inevitable that the city would eventually assume control over this operation as it began as a pilot project. “That’s always been the intent,” Boven said. He said the initial five-year contract the Andersons had was extended because at the time the city wasn’t ready to purchase the compost site and begin operating it. There was no intent this time to try extend the agreement between the city and the Good Earth Company again.
Boven said the city intends to carry on operations as usual at the compost site and maintain the current staffing. Currently the composting site has one employee. The city will also continue to use the product around town, in areas such as flower beds and for mulching. The Andersons started the Good Earth Company in 2007 in response to then-council’s dilemma in dealing with the leftover materials from the city’s wastewater treatment process. “We tried composting ourselves, we didn’t really have the resources, we didn’t have the capital to construct the site,” Boven said. The Andersons were the successful bid to construct and operate a facility via a pilot project. Class A biosolids from the City of Merritt’s wastewater treatment facility have been treated at the Good Earth Company’s state-of-the-art composting site ever since. Boven said the city paid a monthly fee of $20,000 to send its biosolids to the compost
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site, and estimates it will cost them less than this amount to assume operations. “It’s kind of a net-zero venture,” he said. Boven said he believes the city should in fact save money by operating the facility itself, but only time will tell. The city will continue to sell the compost, as the Andersons did. “We need the site to process biosolids and get rid of them. To me it’s not really a business venture, but the community’s come to expect and enjoy using them and being able to purchase them,” Boven said. “We’ll continue to make it to the same specifications as John and Kate have been manufacturing,” Boven said. The entire process of turning Merritt’s biosolids into compost takes about a year. Council voted in favour of executing this purchase agreement for the compost facility at a closed meeting back in June. Mayor Neil Menard was the only member of council opposed. This resolution from the closed meeting was made public this month.
19.5% David Dyck THE MERRITT HERALD
Last week’s aggregate polling data from analyst Éric Grenier’s ThreeHundredEight.com puts Conservative incumbent Dan Albas up to 40.2 per cent up from 37.9 per cent in the newly formed Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola riding. He is trailed by NDP challenger Angelique Wood, sitting at 29.6 per cent, down significantly from the first round of polling data, which put her at 34.5 per cent. Liberal candidate Karley Scott has also made gains. She is projected to take 19.5 per cent of the vote, up from an initial polling of 18.8 per cent. Green candidate Robert Mellalieu is projected to take 9.7 per cent. ThreeHundredEight takes polling data from multiple sources and combines the results to form an aggregate prediction of voter attitudes, broken down by individual riding. Overall, the numbers predict that if a federal election were held, there would be an NDP victory with 127 of the total 338 seats in the House of Commons.
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