RDKB Closing some unattended transfer stations
By Les Johnson
At the Regional District’s town hall meeting last Feb. 7 the public were notified of the imminent closing of some of the 9 unattended transfer stations. This is the end result of a study begun last May into searching for solutions to the problems with them.
“Doing our research we found out quite a lot of astonishing things about these stations” says Al Stanley the Director of Environmental Services. “We found that we have no permits to be on any of these 9 unattended transfer stations. They were all on crown right of ways.”
Stanley added that their research showed there were lots of legal obstacles to obtaining permission and more over their lawyers advised them that bylaws would be unenforceable at these sites. “We went through all of our sites and found they were just absolute nightmares in terms of public and staff health and safety. Some of these sites were cleaned 2 and 3 times a week and it was just this ongoing maintenance issue.”
After more research and a review of the new standards for these sites they realized they couldn’t operate them within these areas. In order to decide what to do they worked out a policy. Primary to that was they really want people to use staffed facilities because without staffing you can’ t control any of this. They would like everyone in the district to be within 30 minutes of a staffed facility. A review of the current sites showed that a number of them are close enough to a staffed facility so these have been considered extraneous and will be shut down. The two sites at Texas Point and McRae Creek are close enough to the staffed site at Christina Lake so they will be shut down. Area ‘C’ Director Grace McGregor was pointed out that these sites were there for the boat access people to begin with but many others had used them.
The sites which will be closed are: Texas Point, McRae Creek, Bridesville, Westbridge, Jewel Lake.
The sites that will remain open are: Mt. Baldy, Sidley Mtn, Idabel Lake, and Christian Valley.
Communications will be going out to those affected by this in the near future. Sites begin closed will not be there as of May 1.
