Avalon towns want garbage master plan rethought

Municipal neighbours to St. John's want the Newfoundland and Labrador government to limit how much control the capital city has over a regional landfill.

At a meeting Thursday night, other Avalon Peninsula municipalities also decided to lobby the province to drop Robin Hood Bay as the site of a regional landfill, and instead adopt the recommendations of a 2002 report on regional waste management.

That report picked Dog Hill, near the Foxtrap area of Conception Bay South, as a preferred regional landfill.

The provincial government rejected the advice, and decided to revamp the existing dump at Robin Hood Bay, in the northeast end of St. John's.

No one from St. John's city council showed up at Thursday night's meeting.

At a recent meeting, St. John's Mayor Andy Wells said Mount Pearl and other Avalon Peninsula towns had nothing to fear from the fact that St. John's would have majority control of the waste management authority.

In response, the other towns also want the province to follow through on the 2002 report, and give St. John's just five seats on a 13-member committee.

"Because St. John's only has 39 per cent of the population, and 61 per cent is from the rural areas, then it was the position that it flies in the face of democracy," said Bern Hickey, a councillor in the Conception Bay community of Avondale.

Hickey said unless a compromise can be found, the establishment of a regional recycling program will be put on hold.

In March, Municipal Affairs Affairs Minister Jack Byrne— who has since taken medical leave — rejected the 2002 report and disbanded a committee that the former Liberal government had established.