City council has approved next steps in exploring long-term waste management solutions in Ottawa that could include using private landfills, building a new landfill site and creating a waste-to-energy incineration facility.
At the council meeting on Wednesday, council studied five possible paths to long-term waste management and agreed to pursue exploring next steps on three. The final recommendations will come before council in Q1 2027.
Among these three options is to continue using the landfill on Trail Road until full and then switch to using private facilities. According to city staff, this is the least costly option in the short-term, but could include long-term risks from relying on private companies.
According to the staff report, this could mean unpredictable costs and limited space. Although no significant capital investment would be needed immediately, the tipping fees could be controlled by the owners of the private facilities, resulting in higher costs in the future.
Another option that council voted to explore is building a waste-to-energy incineration facility that would burn waste and reduce landfill use by up to 77 per cent, according to the staff report.
The facility would provide revenue from energy capture and could have a lower environmental impact, but it would include significant investment. Staff estimated the facility would require capital costs ranging from $497 million to $862 million and annual operating costs of $47 million. The next steps approved by council will include exploring opportunities to offset some of these costs.
Finally, council agreed to consider building a new landfill, which would cost between $439 million and $761 million. The landfill would manage residual waste from the City and have annual operating costs of $15.6 million, staff said, and likely produce less greenhouse gases than the incineration facility. However, staff warned that finding a site for landfill and securing approvals “could be challenging.”
The decision for staff to examine these options more closely came from a motion from Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley, who said he wanted more details on the financial implications of each option before voting.
Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Lieper said he’d vote against the motion not because he didn’t support seeking new options, but because he specifically was opposed to the possibility of building the incineration facility.
Laine Johnson, councillor for College Ward, confirmed with staff that the motion did not “preclude” any recommendations that staff would make after the “robust” analysis.
“As long as we remain confident that only through the analysis done through experts…I’m not interested in having too many of us weigh in before we have the facts on the table,” she said.
The City is also working to extend the life of the Trail landfill by six to 15 years through “better waste diversion” and a possible expansion.
These approaches are meant to complement current actions, which include material bans at the Trail landfill and the diversion of 60,000 tonnes of waste to private landfills annually starting in 2026.
