Is Nanaimo's Composting Program A Success?

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Instead Of Kitchen and Yard Waste Going Into Landfill
Is It Just Rotting (composting) And Being Stored In A Different Form?

Recent events at the Regional District of Nanaimo vis a vis suddenly discovering we will have to pay another $300,000/yr. to keep the composting facility at Duke Point operating calls into question just how well this program is actually running.

What triggered recent events was an odor control study conducted as a result of complaints from Cedar residents. In order to implement some of the abatement measures it would require the company to spend approximately $1,000,000 which apparently it simply does not have.

It now turns out that the company operating the composting plant was in imminent danger of going bankrupt unless the RDN agreed to paying another $300,000/yr. It also seems we are not actually getting rid of all that composted material either. In fact, dealing with the finished product is becoming quite an issue itself. The Duke Point site is having to store large quantities on site as is the Apline Soils site on Nanaimo River Road.

The company taking over the running of the composting plant value their finished product at $0.00 in their business plan, which says something about the economics of this business. In fact it seems we are having so much of this product which can't be absorbed by the market that we have now agreed to put as much as 7 dump truck loads of the overs from the site, back into the Cedar landfill!

There are many, many questions that need answering before we can hope to call our composting program a success.