County looks towards regional waste collection pickup

By Fred Groves

The Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority (EWSWA) wants its seven county municipal stakeholders to take a new collective approach to its operations.

Last Wednesday night during its live-streamed regular meeting, Essex County Council took a positive approach towards passing the responsibility of waste collection from individual municipalities to the county.

Michelle Bishop, general manager of EWSWA, laid out options for both regional collection and processing of organic waste.

“There are other regions that have gone through this process in the past,” stated Bishop.

Currently, each of the seven county municipalities, including Amherstburg, have individual contracts for waste collection. As pointed out by Bishop, those range in cost from $650,000 to $1.7 million annually and the costs are escalating dramatically.

A decision could be made soon as to whether or not individual municipalities want the county to take over collection.

“If it’s a decision of council it will have to be collaborative. It won’t be a handoff to the county,” explained Bishop.

Bishop said that if there is one large contract for collection it could be beneficial in several ways including freeing up municipal staff for other duties, competition between those bidding on the contract and simplified routing of pickup.

Essex County director of finance/ treasurer Sandra Zwiers anticipated cost savings if the county were to take over waste collection.

“The goal is to standardize the service the best we can,” she said.

Zwiers pointed out that there would have to be some fine tuning of the funding model option which would put general levy versus a county user fee.

“From a financial perspective we see a lot of wins.”

Also, on the table for county municipalities to decide is whether or not they want to have organic waste collected.

Bishop said that by 2030 landfills will have a ban on organic waste and that is why the WESWA is implementing a plan to divert it away from the landfill now by having a local company responsible for the collection of organic waste.

“Regardless of the decision of council, we have a RFT (Right for Tender) for the collection of organic waste,” said Bishop.

Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy, and other members of county council, felt that greenhouse operators were the major contributors to organic waste in the landfill and that the county should be looking in that direction instead of residential households.

“I think we are going after the wrong consumer,” said Bondy. “I have a lot of residents in Essex who don’t want to pay this at all.”

County council decided to send a letter to the province, stating in regards to whom the biggest contributor of organic waste to landfills in the area are.

“If it’s the request of council, we can send a letter to the province. I know it’s on their radar,” said Bishop.