The future of Race City
The old Race City site will go from speeding karts to green carts, after a committee picked that southeast spot Wednesday to host the citywide compost processor.
Calgary has seen early successes with its four-community trial of organic waste pickup, but doesn’t expect to bring the service to the rest of Calgary until 2016. One of the big reasons for that delay is development of a processing facility for all that food and yard waste, and a key milestone was picking its location.
The site of Calgary’s car racing track, shuttered after last season, had long been earmarked for stormwater management for the nearby Shepard landfill, but also for waste processing, project manager Jim Miller said.
That land between 68th Street S.E. and the ring road was chosen among 38 alternatives, including the Spyhill Landfill in the city’s northwest and in a rural industrial area near High River. It was deemed most affordable and easiest for Alberta Environment approvals.
“Preparing the facility is like preparing a landfill: it takes many years of going through regulatory process and the preparation in order to finally build it,” Ald. Druh Farrell said.
The waste division will bring a capital plan to the city next March, but earlier preliminary estimates put costs at $50 million to $60 million, to potentially be recouped through user fees — as is the case with the recycling plant. It’s also unclear yet whether the city will contract a private firm to construct and operate the massive organics digester.
Abbeydale, Southwood, Cougar Ridge and Brentwood have been given green carts to test out how Calgarians would take to composting. After the first few months, city garbage trucks are picking up 40 per cent less waste from conventional black carts in those neighbourhoods.
Car racing groups, meanwhile, have been trying to secure an out-of-town plot for a new track complex.
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