Integrating Liquid and Solid Waste Planning to Make Green Infrastructure Pay

This paper describes the results of an Integrated Resource Recovery study in the Canadian community of Comox Valley, British Columbia. Separate departments of the regional government had planned to double the size of the existing biosolids composting facility, to build two new landfills, and also to build a new composting facility for source-separated organic waste. The study found that if the community's needs for wastewater and solid waste infrastructure are reviewed in an integrated manner, the results for the environment and for taxpayers can be better than the business-as-usual approach. The study predicted significant benefits from the construction of a new anaerobic digestion facility for the digestion of biosolids and source-separated organic waste, and co-treatment and upgrading of captured landfill gas and biogas from anaerobic digestion into pipeline-quality biomethane for use in regional transit buses and for sale to a utility. This integrated approach would result in an estimated $2.9 million per year of increased value to the community versus the business-as-usual approach. The integrated option would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 23,000 tonnes per year, and result in eight fulltime jobs.