Alternate location for biowaste plant?

In answer to “Coach”, who asks “why then would they want to place this Bio gas plant here?”, in Breslau.

When I first heard about an alternate location for the Bio-En biowaste plant I thought it would be re-located much further north, perhaps near the intersection of Reid Woods Drive and Arthur Street, close to the transformer station. But at last week’s Woolwich Township Council meeting I found out that the proposed alternate location is in Breslau on Menno Street, near the Conestoga Meat Packers plant. I don’t know on what side of the street, or on what side of Conestoga Meat Packers, so the marker on the top map is only a guess.


The second map is to the same scale, and shows that the location in Elmira is much closer to residential houses than the alternate location in Breslau. With the Waterloo airport close by the alternate location, the area is not likely to be zoned for more residential development. The Breslau location is zoned properly for this kind of industry. The Elmira location was rejected by Woolwich Council in 2009 (?) because it didn’t meet the existing zoning requirements.

Also, the alternate location is about 21km closer to Highway 401, which means the amount of trucking is considerably reduced. That not only reduces the amount of exhaust and particulate emissions, it also reduces fuel costs. It’s been calculated that the amount of fuel needed to truck the waste to Elmira uses more energy than is produced by the biowaste plant. If that’s true, it would actually be better to burn the diesel fuel directly in the generators – you’d get more electricity for the same cost in fuel.

So, the plant location in Breslau isn’t ideal, but it’s an improvement over the Elmira location. Still, there should be someplace else where there’s no people, close to the main transportation corridor.

–Bob.

See the Breslau location on OpenStreetMap.

See the Elmira location on OpenStreetMap.

Maps are made available and © by OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA