WESTLOCK – Westlock County will not allow Village of Clyde residents access to the Vimy Transfer Station, with the CAO saying that’s a “can of worms” councillors don’t want to open for the municipality.
Following in-camera debate at their Oct. 25 meeting, councillors directed CAO Tony Kulbisky to pen a letter to the village that will, in essence, say: “Thank you for the request, we want to be regional partners but we’re going to have say no on this one.” In March, Village of Clyde councillors voted 4-0 to direct administration to investigate the potential for a partnership to allow villagers access to county-owned transfer stations.
“We understand the request in terms of what they want to do, but because the transfer stations are not monitored per se in terms of how much product would be coming into that transfer station we just didn’t want to open that can of worms and then have a whole bunch of stuff coming in that the county would end up paying the tippage fees on. There’s no appetite to entertain that,” said Kulbisky in an Oct. 26 follow-up interview.
The county’s four waste transfer stations, which are exclusively for county residents and are not a part of the Westlock Regional Waste Management Commission governed by the Town of Westlock, county and village, are in Jarvie, Busby, Vimy and Pibroch. The four sites are not landfills “but holding areas where waste is stored on a temporary basis until it is trucked to the Westlock Regional Landfill” which is governed by the commission. At their March debate, Clyde Coun. Starla Sydia said she knew of many villagers who like using the Vimy site, “ … especially when you need to go down back roads and you have an open load.”
“It’s almost eight kilometres from the Village of Clyde to the regional landfill and it’s 10 miles on gravel road to the Vimy site. So, it didn’t make any sense to council why there would be the request because what’s wrong with going to the (main) site they already have access to?” Kulbisky asked.
Reeve Christine Wiese said while they want to be good regional partners, this request doesn’t make financial sense for the county.
“Collaboration is important, and we want to be able to help out, but the temperature that I got from council was that we really want to focus on our residents and the money has to be staying in the county first,” said Wiese. “We already have an ICF (intermunicipal collaboration framework) with another community that we’re looking at. It’s hard when you want to be fiscally responsible, but you also want to work with the other communities.”
Trash talk with Larkspur
Although not directly tied to Clyde’s request, county councillors have been discussing the municipality’s three-year-old intermunicipal collaboration framework (ICF) agreement with the Summer Village of Larkspur, specifically the solid waste, winter-road maintenance and fire-protection services sub-agreements contained within.
During past debate, Wiese has questioned the waste-disposal sub-agreement fee saying, “I don’t know how accurate it is and if that’s enough for non-residents to be using our transfer stations.” At the June 21 governance and priorities meeting, councillors spent more than 40 minutes going over the ICF, as well as sub-agreements signed in September 2019 before voting 6-1 twice; first to accept the 25-page report as information, then to direct administration to bring back more details to the September GPC meeting. At that same June meeting, then-interim CAO Pat Vincent told council he had “concerns” with the solid waste management sub-agreement between the two.
As it stands Larkspur pays the county $2,500 annually and receives 35 transfer station permit cards for the Jarvie and Pibroch stations — each additional card costs the summer village $75. At that same meeting, Wiese noted in her research she found 78 private dwellings in Larkspur, while agricultural services manager Don Medcke said there are 53 residents— regardless, there is a gap which adds up to a shortfall the county eats.
Kulbisky confirmed they will be meeting Larkspur reps to go over the ICF, as it expires in 2023.
“It’s a similar concern, it’s about the same thing,” said Kulbisky Oct. 26 when asked about a parallel between the Clyde transfer station request and the ICF discussions with summer village. “We issue permit cards to the summer village, and they’ve never reached capacity on their card use. But it’s still the same point … there’s still no accurate way to gauge how much stuff is being put into the transfer site. It could be a low year or a high year, but ultimately, it’s the county paying the bill on it.
“So, if there’s a better solution in the future, maybe this is a non-issue. But for right now in the current practice, it’s a bit of a concern and that’s why we want to have an open and frank discussion.”
