Burnaby, B.C., city council has officially voted to send a controversial plan to construct an organics recycling plant in a park near the Fraser River back to the drafting board.
Councillors voted unanimously Monday to scrap an initiative often called an Alternative Approval Process (AAP), essentially a reverse referendum, that might have moved the Green Recycling and Organics project proposal forward.
The choice was met by cheers from a packed council chamber.
“I’m pleased that city council spoke with one voice in recognition that the general public doesn’t support using parkland for this project,” Mayor Mike Hurley said in a media release.
“Despite the actual fact GRO could deliver significant carbon reductions and permit Burnaby to process its own organic materials, the general public didn’t support the trade-offs required to attain it.”
Hurley said town would now take a look at alternative locations for the project and other initiatives to fulfill its climate goals.
The proposed facility would have taken 8.5 hectares from the Fraser Foreshore Park, and give you the option to process about 150,000 tonnes of green recycling and organics annually, a few third of it coming from Burnaby.
Hurley had touted the plant as a key way for town to fulfill its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, partly by utilizing gas it produced to fuel vehicles, relatively than diesel.
“There have been quite a lot of efforts done and like I said before we had quite a lot of support and we weren’t going to back down,” Burnaby resident and project opponent Eudora Koh told Global News.
“If we’re going to be shipping in a 150,000 tomnes from the remainder of the lower mainland, it’s everyone’s problem,” added Jasmine Nicholsfigueriedo.
Under B.C.’s Community Charter, municipalities looking for to remove land from parks must gain community approval through certainly one of several processes including using an AAP.
Under that process, greater than 10 per cent of registered Burnaby voters would wish to forged a ballot against the measure so as to stop it.
