Metro Vancouver's garbage incinerator in south Burnaby is being showcased as one of the region's green and clean initiatives to visiting delegates from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Mayors and councillors from across the country who were in Vancouver for the FCM convention had a chance to tour the waste-to-energy facility on Saturday and again Monday.
The incinerator has not been without its difficulties in the past year. Fly ash that's dumped at the Cache Creek landfill tested above permitted limits for leachable cadmium last summer, forcing the ash to instead go to an Alberta special waste landfill pending further testing.
Metro's plan to build a new waste-to-energy plant or plants remains controversial.
The region aims to build a new plant to burn 370,000 tonnes of garbage a year – 30 per cent more than the Burnaby incinerator – by 2018. Metro is in the process of short-listing private partners and will call for potential sites to host the new plant this summer.
Public tours of the incinerator are also available at other times – 800 to 1,000 people a year visit the plant.
More FCM waste tour videos at http://new.livestream.com/metrovan1/waste.