Aron Hershmiller, Assistant Director of Environmental Services with the City, recently spent two weeks in Jordan offering his expertise to municipal officials in that country.
The trip was organized and funded by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and “was part of a project with Global Affairs (Canada),” Hershmiller told Yorkton This Week.
The Jordan Municipal Support Project is designed to help local governments engage citizens and modernize solid waste infrastructure.
“Jordan’s municipal institutions and services face extraordinary pressure as the country hosts 1.4 million displaced Syrians,” noted www.fcm.ca. “Some municipal services require immediate attention. In some municipalities, for example, the volume of solid waste has doubled, which strains the existing infrastructure. If poorly managed, the situation could become a serious public health or environmental crisis.
“When opportunities arise, this program connects Canadian municipal leaders and experts with elected officials and municipal staff in central and southern Jordan. It facilitates peer-to-peer technical assistance to help Jordan’s local governments manage their solid waste infrastructure systems and engage citizens.”
Hershmiller said he was one of two Canadians to make the recent trip, a follow up to one made earlier that saw Michael Buchholzer and Randy Goulden from the City in Jordan.
“They started the process,” he said.
While in Jordan Hershmiller said he and Russ Smith from Victoria, were working with “12 rural municipalities around the capital (Amman),” adding those municipalities ranged from populations of 7800 up to 78,000, with most in the 16-20000 range. “So they had a lot of similarities with Yorkton being similar in size and being more rural.”
Hershmiller said based on the similarities officials in Jordan related well with him, whereas Smith coming from Victoria with a population of 400,000 faced something of a barrier in relating to the situation in Jordan.
As it was, Hershmiller said he found that in terms of dealing with materials that have traditionally gone to the landfill, Victoria is a few years ahead of Yorkton in terms of recycling and alternate ways of dealing with the waste, but added Yorkton is about 30 to 40-years ahead of what is happening in Jordan.
And that is what they were in Jordan for, to help those municipalities involved take steps forward.
“We were working with the 12 municipalities to help them get the baseline information on solid waste,” he said, adding the end goal “was to help them develop a solid waste management plan.”
Part of such a plan is to ensure community engagement, and to create something that is sustainable.
As a starting point, Hershmiller said they were focusing attention on the need to actually monitor waste flows to know not just what is being handled, but how much, so that can be factored into a plan.
“What’s the plan? What do we have for assets” he asked, reiterating a waste audit would provide the needed baseline data.
“You need to collect the data to understand today what you have to make decision going forward,” he said.
While details are yet to be worked out through the organizing agencies, Hershmiller said it is anticipated he will return to Jordan before the end of the year to continue the work toward the municipalities involved having formalized plans for solid waste management.
