Medicine Hat seeking regional partner on $9.5M food waste facility before final decision

Sharps told CHAT News the next meeting was scheduled for Thursday.

It decided not include the item in the 2025-26 capital budget during last year’s deliberations.

Staff say the project would work as a cost-saving measure as the landfill runs out of airspace and they point to the success of a food waste pilot program as a marker of support from residents.

About 25 per cent of Medicine Hat residents were included in the pilot last spring. Participants received food waste buckets to dump into a green yard waste bin to keep it out of the landfill.

A survey found that 77 per cent of respondents were in favour of implementing the program permanently.

While there existed widespread support for the program, city officials were looking to partner with Medicine Hat’s neighbours to keep costs lower.

Coun. Shila Sharps agreed there were two good-faith attempted attempts by Medicine Hat at finding a regional solution.

But, she added, a staff report to council did not include that there were also good-faith responses to those city requests from the Intermunicipal Committee.

“Additionally, the (staff report) mentions that there was no motion of committee,” Sharps said in a follow up statement to CHAT News on Wednesday.

“I’m unsure what was meant by this, but the statement was incorrect. There was a motion of (the Intermunicipal Committee) to defer this to the next meeting, and it was unanimously approved.”

Coun. Alison Van Dyke said she is on-board even if the city decides to go at it alone because of the implications it has for Medicine Hat’s future.

“It’s actually one of the first things even when I started campaigning people would ask, ‘why don’t we have a kitchen waste composting program?’” she said.

“I continued being asked that through my term, and then since the pilot project ended, I’ve had questions of ‘why aren’t we now doing this?’”

Organics sent to a landfill produce harmful methane gas as it decomposes without oxygen. Landfills, as one of the largest sources of methane emissions, are a major contributor to climate change.

Methane is responsible for about 30 per cent of the current increase in global temperature since the pre-industrial era, according to reporting from the International Energy Agency.

There’s also an economic case to be made, Van Dyke said.

“We will run out of room eventually in our landfill, which will require a new landfill, which requires licensing for the environment and money to development,” she said.

“So the cost incurred, if we don’t act productively, is going to be immense.”

An motion to defer the food waste composting facility item to the July 7 meeting passed unanimously.

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Editor’s Note: An edit was made on June 18 to include statements from Coun. Shila Sharps clarifying that she was not disputing that there were good-faith efforts by the city but only that she wanted to point out the Intermunicipal Committee did give a response.

by Olivia Thorington

Medicine Hat seeking regional partner on $9.5M food waste facility before final decision

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