FORT FRANCES — The Town of Fort Frances is currently looking into the feasibility of accepting international waste from Koochiching County into its aging landfill site.
During last Monday night’s meeting of town council, discussion turned to an administrative report from the town’s operations and facilities division which suggested Fort Frances begin looking into developing a cost for accepting international waste at the municipal landfill, located in the north end of town limits.
According to the report, prepared for council by operations and facilities manager Travis Rob, the town has been approached by representatives for Koochiching County in the United States inquiring as to whether the town might be able to accept waste in light of the county not having its own landfill site.
“Administration has been discussing the opportunity with Koochiching County Environmental Services for a number of years to accept waste from their transfer station in International Falls at the Fort Frances Landfill site,” Rob wrote in his report.
“Koochiching County does not currently own or operate a landfill, their waste is shipped and landfilled in Hallock, Minnesota, and their agreement is due to expire at the end of the year.
Koochiching has asked if the Town would be interested in providing a price currently to accept the waste for consideration in their evaluation of options at the expiry of their contract given the significant reduction in shipping related costs.”
Rob notes that the town has subsequently engaged with the Ministry of the Environment and Canada Customs Agency in order to determine what regulations would be in place surrounding accepting international waste, however one of the larger considerations to be made is what exactly the town would charge the county in order to accept and dump the waste into the local landfill.
Currently, the town has no framework in place to charge for this specific situation, and before administration got to work on it, Rob wanted to see if the idea was one council would entertain in the first place.
“With the waste being international in nature, it must be handled in a specific way so the cost to tip would not be the same as a local contractor, however before Administration undertakes the exercise of determining a cost, Council needs to determine if they are interested in entertaining this request,” Rob wrote.
“Koochiching County represents a very similar population to the Town of Fort Frances and as would be expected generates very similar quantities of wastes annually.
If Council is interested in participating, Administration will work with the respective ministries and Landfill Operator to develop a cost for the works required to accept the waste.”
During the meeting, Rob explained to council that the existing landfill is currently expected to reach its end of life in roughly ten years, and that by accepting additional waste from our neighbours the south, that lifespan would likely shorten by half.
However, the additional income generated by charging the county, and potentially even other municipalities and communities within the district for this service could also be put towards the next iteration and location of the town’s landfill site, as Rob said it’s a matter of when, not if, the town will need one.
“The reality of it is we have limited opportunity to expand in our current site, not due to lack of available land or anything like that, it’s really contained within the regulations that we have to operate the landfill site within,” he said.
“Even if we do an expansion, we’re now 20 years away from having to have a brand new landfill site, which, in the scheme of how long it takes to create a new landfill site, is like tomorrow. We are heading down the path of a new site, that’s going to have that 30 - 40 year life cycle, and the more agencies like this that are coming and asking to utilize that will help us design that site for the total waste that we’re anticipating having, not just the town of Fort Frances.
If we design it for just the Town of Fort Frances’ current waste, and then we have other people coming to the to the table, that life is going to shrink. So we want to have all of these interested parties at the table early saying, you know, ‘yes, we might be interested down the road,’ so we can design and build for that as we work through this process.”
Rob further explained that while there is a cost to the municipality to process waste, it doesn’t go up at a rate equal to the additional waste coming in, so taking in more waste from Koochiching County and surrounding communities would present an additional opportunity for generating revenue that would help offset future expansion and operating costs.
There is also additional work to be done in looking into what regulations and rules might surround accepting waste across an international border, though he did note there was “not as daunting red tape as one might expect” and that Koochiching County sends its waste to a transfer station before it’s taken away, which means anything coming to the Fort Frances landfill site would have been sorted with “better diversion” of recyclables and other materials not fit for landfill than our own waste.
The operations and facility manager stressed that no agreement has been reached with Koochiching County at this point, only that they were examining their options to determine what the best course of action would be for them as their existing agreement reaches its end date.
To that end, Rob recommended that council accept the report in order to begin costing out what that service might look like in the near future, and allow the municipality to engage with other interested parties who might see diverting their waste to the Fort Frances landfill as a better option for their communities.
Council ultimately approved the recommendation to begin a cost analysis, though no timeframe was given for when the item might return to council chambers for further discussion.
Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Initiative
