By GARY HOLMAN

SSI CRD DIRECTOR

I’m writing to clarify recent Driftwood articles regarding recycling at School District 64 (SD64), the Burgoyne composting facility, and the CRD Regional Trail.

The CRD strongly incentivizes residential recycling. Recycling BC, the non-profit corporation responsible for residential recycling throughout the province, provides some funding for rural depots, but CRD funding comprises the lion’s share. My priority has been to ensure continuation of this funding, and the CRD Board has recently approved a five-year contract for the Rainbow Road depot with funding of over $400,000 annually, as they have done for years. 

Garbage disposal for all sectors is served by private haulers on a user-pay basis. Neither Recycling BC nor the CRD have any mandate from the province to fund recycling for commercial or taxpayer-supported institutional sectors. However, CRD does enforce bans on recyclables and other materials at the Hartland landfill, ranging from food waste to construction lumber, and also encourages recycling of these materials with its tipping fee structure.  

The CRD is addressing waste management at the regional scale in other ways, including by investing millions of dollars in the recapture of methane generated within the landfill, and selling renewable gas to Fortis BC. This is resulting in one of the single largest reductions in regional greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to material bans, the CRD is also investigating alternatives such as gasification in order to extend the life of the Hartland landfill and avoid the huge cost we would all bear of establishing a new landfill in the region. 

The CRD Board does recognize the gaps in our waste management system. In September 2025, CRD staff contacted all school districts in the region, including SD64, to invite discussion of ways to facilitate recycling. Staff will soon be bringing a report to the Environmental Services Committee, to present some of these options, and I look forward to future discussions with SD64. 

With respect to food and other organic waste, which is rightly banned from the Hartland landfill, the CRD has provided several hundred thousand dollars in funding to establish and take ownership of a commercial-scale composting facility at the Burgoyne Valley Community Farm, in collaboration with the Farmland Trust (land owner) and the Abattoir Society (compost operator). At its May 13 meeting, the CRD Board will approve an exemption, subject to a 30-day public consultation period, to its composting bylaw that is redundant to provincial regulations. This will enable the composter to receive a broader range of feedstock from offsite sources, including the school district. The Trust is also considering a Farmland Trust rezoning application, allowing for offsite sales, that will enhance viability and broader community benefits. 

These issues demonstrate that while I’ve raised concerns regarding equitable treatment of electoral areas, there are also important CRD services and partnerships from which Salt Spring benefits. The new regional transportation service is not one of those examples. But the good news is that for the first time, several million dollars in design and construction funding for the Salt Spring segment of the CRD Regional Trail is still retained in the CRD Parks capital plan. While trail design won’t be accelerated, CRD Parks will oversee design work in 2027 with no delays as a regional transportation plan is developed.

A Capital Regional District (CRD) report has confirmed that CRD electoral area residents pay more taxes to fund some regional services than they get back. 

Titled Regional Equity Investments (REI), the report arose from a request by Salt Spring electoral area director Gary Holman through the CRD Hospitals and Housing Committee. The resulting analysis found the three electoral areas provided 7.5 per cent of the requisition total and received two per cent in capital hospital funds and 1.5 per cent in housing over a 15-year period.  

Now what’s needed is a similar study undertaken for the rest of the CRD’s regional service spending.

We might feel differently if the CRD Board had not rebuffed a formal request for Salt Spring to be excluded from a new region-wide transportation service last fall. Salt Spring residents already pay for their own transportation and transit service, Holman and Local Community Commissioner Brian Webster told the board, and are unlikely to benefit from contributing to another one. The cost is $26 per average-assessed household this year, but is expected to rise to $100 per year. Then-board-chair Colin Plant said if we wanted a Fulford Harbour to Vesuvius regional trail, this service would be the way to go, adding it would be “untenable” for Salt Spring to not participate. But guess what happened when the Salt Spring Island Regional Trail concept hit the CRD Transportation Committee agenda? Members suggested that already earmarked design funds for the same trail Plant cited might more appropriately come from the regional parks budget. This is after the proposal was originally punted from the CRD Regional Parks Committee to the Transportation Committee late last year. A report on the matter has been commissioned and is due in September of 2027. . . unbelievable!

We understand the tendency is to spend funds to benefit the largest number of people. Building an urban apartment building or spending money on upgrading the wildly popular Galloping Goose Trail makes more sense than providing significant funds to a 20-unit housing complex on, say, Pender Island, or an off-road trail on Salt Spring.

But it does beg the question of what we are paying for, exactly, and why, when moving off the islands may be the only clear way to benefit.