The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Mayor George Fontaine is hopeful that results from a city-funded study can avert the worst-case scenario for the Flin Flon landfill _ closure. Last year, the NDP government ordered the city to conduct a study that, among other things, examined the remaining lifespan of the refuse site. 'We feel we can go a lot longer with (the dump) we have and we feel our (study) results prove that we can go that way because what we've seen has been nothing incriminating with our dump,' Mayor Fontaine said at Tuesday's city council meeting. While that's good news for taxpayers, it remains to be seen whether the province, which regulates landfills, has the same opinion. Closing the landfill would cost 'in the multi millions of dollars,' Mayor Fontaine said. Responding to pointed questions about the $172,300 cost of the landfill study, Mayor Fontaine told taxpayer advocate Blair Sapergia that 'just so you understand, we don't like it anymore than you do.' But the goal, the mayor said, is to keep expenses as low as possible. 'So in the end we're spending money, but what's our choice here?' he said. 'If you're going to go without a dump, it's going to be a lot worse than than what it is now, and a lot more expensive.' Mayor Fontaine said there has been a provincewide push for communities to move away from individual dumps and toward regional landfills. He said the city is not interested in a proposed regional landfill that would have Flin Flon garbage shipped to a landfill at least an hour away at a significant cost. The landfill study, conducted by consulting firm CH2M Hill, was initially budgeted at $68,332 but in the end cost a little over $100,000 extra. Much of the added cost related to ground drilling, an expense none of the companies that vied to conduct the study included in their initial bids. Chief Administrative Officer Mark Kolt said it would be 'very rare' to find a company that would include the cost of drilling in its initial bid given the uncertainties involved.
