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7 Mile Landfill operations tender closes October

Taxes covering the landfill have not increased over the past 15 years and are not expected to soon.
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A new company could step in to run 7 mile Landfill & Recycling daily operations. The Regional District of Mount Waddington put out a bid last month to invite tenders to the 2018 operations contract.

In an online post, the RDMW had called for “tenders for the daily operation of the 7 Mile Landfill. It is the intent of this tender to secure labour and equipment for daily operation of the landfill for a three year period starting January 1, 2019.” The company will then have an opportunity for a two-year extension to the contract.

Steelhead Enterprises, which provides landfill operations and metal roofing services, is finishing their five-year contract, after a two-year extension to the original three-year contract.

Greg Fletcher, chief administrative officer for RDMW, commented that because the contract is going to re-tender, there may be a chance of rates going up. He does reassure residents that this most likely will not be the case for the upcoming tender, however.

“As it happens, historically, the taxes haven’t increased. We’ve had a long, stable run of taxation. A lot of that was closing the loop. As you divert waste there’s some income from that,” he said in an interview. He also noted that regional tax rates for the landfill have not increased for the past 15 years.

Fletcher pointed out that one of the biggest costs for the landfill, which may cause increased tax rates for Mount Waddington’s residents, is airspace. He said that the contract is in fact “designed to incentivize contractors to reduce airspace.”

“Since we’ve started doing airspace incentivization our compaction rate has gone from 500 kilograms a cubic metre to 800 kilograms a cubic metre of garbage,” he noted, “so what that means is we get 60 per cent more life out of the airspace in the landfill.” He added that RDMW incentivizes contractors in a variety of ways for compacting garbage tightly to utilize the airspace better.

“Say there’s a couch and it gets tossed in (the landfill), there may be voids underneath it, but (contractors) can squish it to compact it.” By doing so, he mentioned, the company will not have to expand the landfill as quickly as compared to not compacting it.

“And that’s why (RDMW) hasn’t raised rates, that’s one of the reasons,” he concluded. He does, however, mention that a common issue for the North Island is reducing waste. “It’s not happening to the extent we’d like, even though we’re recycling far more than we have in the past. It’s difficult,” Fletcher said.

7 Mile will recycle over 40 different items and has new scales set up on-site. The landfill has also recently introduced a secondary treatment system. 7 Mile runs landfill programs for product stewardship, garden waste, asbestos handling and composting.