MOOSEJAWTODAY.COM — The fate of the proposed landfill is now in the hands of the Rural Municipality of Moose Jaw’s council, which will spend the next month or two deciding whether to approve the project.
Reeve Ron Brumwell spoke to the media following the RM’s recent public information forum about the City of Moose Jaw’s solid waste management venue project.
He thought the meeting featured good discussions, while the highlight for him was possible new landfill-related technology that “might solve all of our issues.” He hoped to meet with entrepreneur Randall Johnson, who spoke about new processes that turn waste into usable items.
“(That’s) something I’d never heard of before,” Brumwell said.
However, the reeve thought there were still “an awful lot of unanswered questions” with this project, which made it difficult for the RM council to approve since they weren’t fully sure what they were even approving. While city officials discussed how the waste management process works, that was “their side of it and not necessarily our side of it.”
One concern Brumwell had was the city hadn’t provided a traffic impact analysis of how Highway 2 would be affected by the increased traffic. The RM council has already met with the Ministry of Highways and learned the province thought turning lanes would be sufficient, but that hasn’t been confirmed in writing.
Also, the RM hasn’t received a site suitability report from the Ministry of Environment, even though it requested one.
“So, till we get those, a lot of those questions that have been asked (during the forum) can’t be answered,” Brumwell said. “So … I don’t know what else council is going to come up with for comments or questions that need to be answered before we can call for a vote.”
Brumwell added that he and his councillors would discuss the issue during their April and May meetings and determine whether to approve or reject the discretionary use application.
