Oliver Landfill Receives Provincial and Federal Funding
The Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) has received an $800,000 grant to construct a residential food waste compost site at the Oliver Landfill. The grant includes $400,000 contributed by the Province of BC and $400,000 from the Federal Government.
The total estimated construction and equipment costs of the compost site will be $1.2 million. Food waste composting has been a goal of the RDOS for close to a decade. Food waste composting will reduce waste entering the landfill which extends the life of our landfills. It will also create local compost for agriculture.
Presently, the Oliver Landfill does not have a compost site and managing yard and agricultural materials received has become a growing problem. When completed, the compost site will accept residential food waste, yard waste, and agricultural organics.
Only residential food waste from the Towns of ….Oliver, Osoyoos, Electoral Areas… “A” and “C” …and OIB reserve lands will come to the site.
No commercial waste or wastewater treatment sludge will be accepted. The site is expected to open in 2022. The Oliver Landfill Compost Site will use a technique called ‘turned windrows’.
The Grand Forks Landfill has successfully used this approach to compost residential food waste for a number of years.
The compost site will be fully lined to manage leachate, and new equipment will be purchased to minimize odours. RDOS board chair Karla Kozakevich sees this project as being a benefit for the whole South Okanagan.
“This grant helps us create local compost while lowering costs and reducing greenhouse gases created in landfills, says Kozakevich. “Having the Provincial and Federal governments provide 2/3 funding will ensure the success of this project.”
The RDOS continues to look for a separate, large scale region-wide compost site near Penticton. This potential regional compost site would have the necessary odour control equipment to receive commercial food waste from across the RDOS.
If constructed, the large region-wide compost site would have the potential to receive commercial food waste from the Oliver and Osoyoos areas.