Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 06/02) - A pair of incinerator builders are looking at Yellowknife with a gleam in their eyes after touring the dump last week.

"So far, everything looks positive," said Dieter Obergfell, a representative for German incineration technology who toured Yellowknife last week. "They (the city) just have to say yes and we could go ahead."

But, he says, the technology to generate electricity from the garbage can't be used if parts of the waste stream are diverted for recycling programs.

That may conflict with Yellowknife's recently-adopted solid waste management plan, which calls for 40 per cent of combustible materials currently entering the dump to be diverted to the south.

If that happens, Obergfell said, it would be impossible to install an electricity-generating unit with the incinerator, since there wouldn't be enough waste.

The proposed incinerator would be entirely designed, built and owned by the German firms. That would mean the city would not have to field any of the estimated $45 million cost for the unit.

However, the city would have to commit to a guaranteed amount of annual waste for the incinerator to operate. It would also have to guarantee the purchase of any heat or electricity produced.

The question of recycling Yellowknife's waste is an important one. Obergfell has said clearly that "it doesn't make sense" to truck recycled goods the 1,600 kilometres to Edmonton.

But other councillors and interested groups are fighting the notion that the most economical argument should carry the day. They say an incinerator would remove any reason to recycle or reuse.

"If we can reuse (goods) through a recycling process, that's the most sound way," said Coun. Robert Hawkins.

Others are worried about the byproducts of incineration. Although Obergfell reassured councillors that the incineration devices meet German environmental standards -- considered some of the most stringent in the world -- Katrina Miller of the Toronto Environmental Alliance disagrees.

Miller is a waste and pesticide reduction coordinator and is currently conducting a study on incinerator technologies, which Toronto is also considering. She says the extreme temperatures of incineration would create dioxins that would come out in the ash.

"If you don't get it in the stack you get it in the fly ash and the slag," she said. "You're still creating the most carcinogenic substance known to man."

City council is still keeping an open mind on the matter, however, and is waiting for the results of a German pre-feasibility study.