Not like this

In a debate that took place behind closed doors at regional headquarters, a majority of councillors came to the consensus that the Durham York Energy Centre is good enough to go into commercial operation.

Of course, that came with the caveat of changing the contract that Covanta, the operator of the incinerator, holds with the region. The original contract says that too much ash was produced while burning garbage to produce electricity. The solution? Change the contract, and now suddenly the amount of ash it produced – which originally caused Covanta to fail its acceptance testing last year – is just fine.

Now, it was inevitable that the incinerator was going to be given the green light to go into production. Once the foundations for the building was laid and the contract signed, there was no turning back. It was inevitable that incineration, and whatever problems may result from it, including a wafting bad smell, would be coming to Durham Region.

But now with the project more than a year late and millions of dollars over budget, it seems the region is doing whatever it can to get this thing up and running.

Councillor Nancy Diamond pointed out the list of issues at the incinerator on the council floor that still need to be resolved at the facility which is going to take more spending to fix. And where is that money going to come from? It’ll come from either the taxes that we pay, or from gas tax payments to the region, which means money that could instead go towards fixing our roads is instead going towards this bloated budget.

In June 2015, when further operational and construction delays were announced during a session of regional council, Regional Chair Roger Anderson stated that he would “rather be a year late and right than on time and wrong.”

Well, with the incinerator now receiving its certificate of approval more than a year later than scheduled and Covanta getting that green light only because the rules of the game were changed, it would appear that we are both late and wrong.

Welcome to the smelly business of burning garbage.