Ottawa to buy private garbage landfill in east end

City Council voted to approve the acquisition of a landfill in Ottawa’s east end. CTV’s Leah Larocque has the story.

The City of Ottawa will buy a private landfill in the city’s east end, which will be part of the future plan to deal with residents’ garbage over the next 30 years.

Council voted 20 to 5 to direct City Manager Wendy Stephanson to negotiate, enter into and finalize an agreement to purchase the Capital Region Resource Recovery Centre, located on Boundary Road between Devine Road and Highway 417.

“We felt it was in the best interest of Ottawa to take the decision that we took today,” Mayor Mark Sutcliffe told reporters after a special Council meeting Wednesday morning.

Councillors Isabelle Skalski, Catherine Kitts, Clarke Kelly, David Brown and Matt Luloff voted against the plan to buy the private landfill. Councillors met in-camera for 90 minutes Wednesday morning to receive an update on the city’s bid to purchase the private landfill before voting to proceed with the purchase in open session.

The motion approved by Council says staff will report back on the details of the purchase, including the cost of the landfill, once the transaction is completed later this winter.

• City of Ottawa will proceed with bidding process to buy private landfill: Here’s what you need to know

The 475-acre Capital Region Resource Recovery Centre, owned by Taggart Miller Environmental Services, is available for sale through a competitive bidding process. The facility has approval to accept 450,000 tonnes of waste a year and has an expected lifespan of approximately 30 years.

“This represents an opportunity for the City of Ottawa, and I think we also have to look at it through the lens of risk management,” Sutcliffe said.

“This site is going to be a landfill; it’s been approved to be a landfill site, it will be a landfill site. The question before us was simply whether it would be owned by the people of Ottawa, where the City of Ottawa would be able to take input from the community and apply that to future decisions that are made about the landfill site, or whether it would be owned by another municipality that would be shipping its garbage into Ottawa to dispose of it here.”

Sutcliffe said while Ottawa is proceeding with the bid, it’s unclear if the purchase will be finalized.

“Staff now have the authority to proceed with a purchase, but, obviously, there are details to be worked out, and we can’t say with 100 per cent certainly that the transaction will be completed,” the mayor said.

“Staff has the authority to negotiate a final agreement now to proceed with the acquisition of the landfill site.”

Any details about the price to buy the landfill will be released once the purchase is completed by the end of March. Staff said the city will fund the purchase through debt.

“This fits within the envelope of funding that we had identified for future expenditures on solid waste management in the future,” Sutcliffe said.

Coun. Skalski, who voted against the acquisition, represents the ward where the landfill is located.

“I voted no for a lot of reasons but in particular, I didn’t think this process was fair for residents. I have concerns with the acquisition itself and I can’t elaborate on what those are, but that will come out later,” Skalski told CTV News.

Skalski says there was a split of votes between urban and rural councillors.

“Urban and suburban councillors don’t have to worry about landfills being part of their backyard. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the acquisition itself was framed as a rare opportunity — A once in a life like an acquisition that doesn’t come around very often.”

Skalski says her main focus moving forward will be representing the best interests of her residents.

“I think in this case, for people who live there, what has been the center of my focus has been their interest in all this,” Skalski said. “Whoever owns it is going to have to ensure the protection of groundwater, the protection of the environment, ensure that they’re engaged effectively and that really has been my focus.”

Public Works General Manager Alain Gonthier told reporters the Solid Waste Master Plan approved in 2024 outlined the future plans for garbage in Ottawa.

“This acquisition is very much in line with the Solid Waste Master Plan that has gone through extensive public consultation. It was also approved by Council.”

In November, Council held a two-and-a-half-hour session behind closed doors to discuss the city’s potential acquisition of the private landfill. Sutcliffe said after the meeting that the city will continue “its participation in the competitive bidding process related to the acquisition of the landfill.”

City staff have described the sale of the Capital Region Resource Recovery Centre as a rare opportunity, noting it takes 15 years to secure regulatory approvals for the landfill and “given Ontario’s available landfilling space is expected to run out within the next decade.”

There has been no mention of the potential price to purchase the landfill. If the city is successful in its bid to purchase the landfill, it would be funded through debt.

Ottawa’s current municipal landfill, the Trail Road Landfill on Trail Road, is expected to reach capacity in the next 10 to 15 years. The Solid Waste Master Plan has implemented several options to extend the life of the landfill, including a new three-item garbage limit for households, the banning of industrial, commercial and institutional waste from the Trail Road dump, and using private landfills. A waste-to-energy incinerator has been identified as one of the best options to consider for future garbage needs.

Council will decide in 2027 what will be Ottawa’s future long-term waste management option.

“The reality is, basically, we will always need a landfill,” Gonthier said.

“Regardless of the technologies that we’re contemplating, there will always be a landfill component. This site actually provides something that is fairly unique in terms of Ontario and a lot of municipalities, I’ll call it a luxury in terms of having more landfill capacity. But that’s still finite.”

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Leah Larocque