New transfer station for garbage and recycling to open July 8
By Bill Metcalfe
Nelson’s new transfer station for garbage and recycle materials near Pacific Insight will open on Tuesday, July 8. The last day residents may take garbage to the old site on the lakefront will be Saturday, July 5, and both stations will be closed on Monday July 7.
The recycling bins at the Lakeside site will remain for the time being, until further notice. There will also be recycling bins at the new site.
The transfer station is run by the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK), which will clean up and cap the site at the lakefront, although the details of that remediation are not yet available. The city will eventually turn the area into a park, in accordance with the its Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan.
“This will be the first time in Nelson’s history,” says the RDCK’s Mike Morrison, “where garbage is not being handled on the waterfront, so it is a good news story.”
The change means that the city’s trucks that pick up garbage and recycling from Nelson streets will have a longer trip. The city has budgeting in anticipation of this, but city staff say they will have to monitor actual costs. One result of the longer trip for the trucks is that garbage pickup times on Nelson streets may change, not to a different day but within the scheduled day.
Morrison says the move and construction were budgeted at $3.1 million, but that he expects the project to come in under budget.
At the same time, the landfill site in Salmo, to which all garbage from the Nelson transfer station is now taken, will also move. The new location is at Ootischenia, near Castlegar. The Salmo landfill will be closed.
The relocation of the transfer station and the landfill are part of the RDCK’s long-term Resource Recovery Plan.
Related story in The Nelson Daily:
Garbage in, garbage out: a quick history of Nelson’s waterfront as a waste dump (April, 2013)
