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There was “shock and awe” at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon, as an emergency meeting of HRM Regional Council convened to condemn the provincial government’s swiftly-enacted controls over how Halifax runs the Otter Lake landfill.
On May 4, Timberlea-Prospect MLA Iain Rankin submitted a private member’s bill to maintain the Otter Lake landfill’s current allowable cell heights. Nine days later it had gone through three readings and now is all-but-approved save for Royal Assent.
The quick turnaround means the bill took most of city council by surprise, prompting Halifax Peninsula North councillor Jennifer Watts to call Wednesday’s emergency meeting to figure out who knew what and when.
“It seems to me some members of this committee, this council were well aware this was happening,” Lower Sackville councillor Steve Craig said. “How could we be in this position on an issue of such important to all of HRM…that we were not made aware of this?”
Back on the same day the bill was introduced at the Legislature, Iain Rankin sent a letter to the Otter Lake Community Monitoring Committee, which was also CC’d to councillors Reg Rankin (his father), Stephen Adams and Matt Whitman.
“While CMC has communicated to the community that HRM does not intend to pursue vertical extension, or build new cells beyond the nine cells, it is my observation that past statements cannot always be relied upon,” Iain Rankin wrote. “I have attached the Bill I introduced today and ask for your support, as the Bill moves through the legislative process.”
Councillors Reg Rankin and Stephen Adams were also on hand at the May 10 Law Amendments Committee to present in support of the bill “as the municipal councillors representing the affected community.”
Rankin the elder told council Wednesday that he attended the Law Amendments meeting as a representative of the Otter Lake Community Monitoring Committee—an arms-length group comprised of nine community members, the mayor, three councillors and two appointed members-at-large—and not as a city councillor.
Rankin the younger had also apparently informed the municipality (through interim CAO John Traves) and mayor Mike Savage about the bill earlier this month, but both men said they didn’t expect it to move through the Legislature as fast as it did.
“Certainly it wouldn’t go that quickly in Ottawa,” said the mayor at Wednesday’s meeting. “We need to be better informed on things like this.”
So despite multiple councillors and officials knowing about the bill and its impacts on HRM, the information wasn’t shared with the rest of council.
“I’m confused,” said Bedford-Wentworth councillor Tim Outhit. “I hear that staff were aware of this, four councillors were aware of this, the CAO and the mayor received a call from the MLA. I’m not sure we didn’t have an internal communications problem.”
For the most part Bill 176 solidifies into law what council already agreed to back in December when they voted not to vertically expand the landfill’s cells as part of a new longterm agreement with operator Mirror Nova Scotia.
But the new bill takes any future flexibility in that arrangement out of the hands of the municipality. Should the 140,000 50,000 tonnes of garbage annually hauled to Otter Lake increase—and it easily could if the cost to ship ICI waste outside the city goes above the landfill’s tipping fees—then Halifax will need to start planning for a new landfill in the next 18 years instead of the next 40. [Ken Donnelly helpfully points out the tonnage is now 50,000 annually without ICI waste, not the 140,000 it used to be, which is what I originally wrote. —JB]
That unanticipated $85-million cost comes as a result of the province reaching down to impose legislation on a single municipality, something Halifax South Downtown councillor Waye Mason called an unprecedented bit of “political theatre.” He wasn’t alone in his fury.
“Are the residents of HRM so special that we require greater regulation around solid waste than any other municipality in the province?” asked Jennifer Watts.
“Quite frankly, it is a very, very sad day, as it relates to the quote-unquote partnership we’re supposed to have with the province of Nova Scotia,” said Bill Karsten.
“If you ask me, this piece of legislation is overkill,” said David Hendsbee, himself a former MLA. “If you ask me, we were blindsided.”
Reg Rankin stood up for his son and downplayed the concerns of his fellow councillors by saying the province was doing what was best for the public by preserving the municipality’s current Otter Lake policies.
“Let resolutions now converge into law,” Rankin said. “They’re not saying anything more than the resolution, but they’re putting it in law.”
Council eventually passed a motion to send a strongly-worded letter to Nova Scotia’s Liberal government on the lack of a consultation process, and the financial and solid waste policy implication of Bill 176.
The motion passed 15-2, with only Rankin and Adams voting against.
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This article appears in May 12-18, 2016.
in checking the backgrounds of all the councillors, not one of them has any education or expertise in landfills. The point is, the dump is getting full, educated people in the province are making decisions, and council has little control. The reason they are upset…a new dump needs to go someplace and who wants a dump in their riding. I bet it will be going between Hubbards and Tantallon so that nice new interchange built down there will get full use. 21 years ago this area was thought of, its the logical choice.
City council continues to be a joke. We have a whole group of Rob Fords sitting around the table with no vision or capacity.
We want greater density in the core but we don’t want to build to accommodate that. We want better economic growth but we want that to occur within the existing small, wooden infrastructure.
When the current dump was built, there were negioations with the community on height, size, what garbage would go into the cells, etc etc. The community trusted this was the agreement and should stay as such and the hrm would honour this. This was 20 years ago. These past couple years, staff and hrm decided they would would basically go back on the agreement and make changes such as getting rid of the front end processor, etc. Hrm held “public consultations”-which seems more about being able to say look we consulted with the public than anything else (actually the last 2 hrm community consultations over various topics have been this way). Anyway, after these meetings council voted to change the initial agreement with the community to save money to spend on other capital expenses (all of what Jennifer Watts referenced was in the urban core, which was a turning point to me watching the meeting. Make other communities deal with your waste while urban Halifax benefits from the savings).
How are citizens and communities supposed to trust their government when they renege on agreements they made with those communities?
It seems to me that HRM has a garbage problem. We are a consumer economy and told to buy buy buy. Most items are 1 time use or meant to throw away and buy another. We need to have a better plan.
It also seems that Urban Halifax just wants to ship their garbage to a rural area instead of changing how they do things. This happens time and again with many types including C & D as well. Why do other communities (whether in HRM or not) want your garbage? They don’t. Stop tearing down building, etc when you cannot deal with the garbage it creates. Really become a bold city and sustainable city by looking after your own waste in your own backyards instead of putting it in someone else’s.
What bull. HRM signed a 25 year contract with Otter Lake and have known this all along. They were told during public consultation sessions over and over that it took 10 years to get an agreement last time…so it was time again to source a new landfill. They chose to ignore this information and while citizens posed many valuable ideas on how to “divert” waste from the landfill, they “diverted” the issue by having it shipped out of HRM. They have also known that the province has been sitting on municipal legislation, that is why they slid in the “recommendation” to cart waste outside of HRM. (This recommendation was not part of he original study nor the 2 rounds of public consultation sessions).