A truck offloads trash at the City of Ottawa's Trail Road landfill on Feb. 27, 2024.
With the Trail Road landfill rapidly filling up, the City of Ottawa is looking at all the options for future garbage disposal. That includes a waste-to-energy incinerator similar to a facility that has sparked substantial pushback in Durham Region.A truck offloads trash at Ottawa's Trail Road landfill on Feb. 27, 2024. City councillors are running out of time to decide what to do once the rapidly filling dump reaches capacity.
A large digital screen outside the Durham York Energy Centre displays the latest emissions readings alongside mandated standards. The City of Ottawa is considering a similar waste-to-energy incinerator. Inside the Clarington facility, a giant metal hook lifts a mound of garbage from a holding area. The burning trash heats water to produce steam, propelling turbines to create enough electricity each year to power 10,000 homes.
John Henry is regional chair and CEO of the Regional Municipality of Durham. He was against the incinerator when the project first came before council, but now supports it. Staff at the City of Ottawa are working on a fast-tracked feasibility study for an incinerator, set to return to council by mid-2025.
There is also no getting around emissions, she said. Landfills create their own greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. A newly formed pile of trash at the Trail Road landfill, which could fill up within about a decade. Fine particles called "fly ash" drift up the flue, while a coarser "bottom ash" settles at the base of the boiler and must be trucked to a landfill.
One of the tasks of the feasibility study will be to decide how much waste the incinerator would need to handle each year. The Regional Municipality of Pontiac has a lofty goal for its own incineration plans, aiming to create a facility more than twice the size of Durham Region's by accepting waste from communities on both sides of the Ontario-Quebec border.
Once that's in place, Toller is confident Ottawa will see that signing on means avoiding what's sure to be a contentious debate on where to build a new landfill in the capital. The councillor representing the ward where the Trail Road landfill is located has said Facility managers in Clarington said their garbage burns at such a high temperature — 1,000 C — that any toxins are destroyed. Covanta also defends its twice-yearly testing for the toxins as proof emissions are well below set standards.
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