How much wood would a wood collection depot collect…

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This article was published 24/10/2019 (2174 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The number of visits to dump wood waste at city collection sites has more than doubled as Winnipeggers clean up from this month’s storm, which dumped 34 centimetres of snow on the city.

The City of Winnipeg said that 1,774 tonnes of wood waste has been dumped by 12,000 visitors to 4R Winnipeg depots, the Brady Road facility and Summit Road Landfill over the last two weeks.

“We’re just scratching the surface at this point. We’re at 1,700 tonnes now… that’s probably going to triple in size, I would imagine,” Michael Gordichuk, manager of solid waste services, told reporters during a media show-and-tell Thursday at Brady Road.

Gordichuk said the Panet Road 4R depot has recorded 140 per cent more visits, while residential trips to the Brady Road facility are up 120 per cent.

Piles of discarded branches in the grounds off Brady Road were nearly as tall as the Bobcat machines used to move the materials by the depot staff. So far, city workers have spent about nine days chipping and grinding wood waste.

Once the waste is turned into wood chips, it is mixed with biosolids and street sweepings until it becomes a soil-like material. The process takes up to nine months, so the post-storm waste will be ready for use in late 2020.

Elm and ash trees can be safely disposed this way, despite threats of invasive species, Gordichuk said, adding ash limbs, however, need to go through grinding twice to ensure they are safe to reuse.

The final product, a type of compost, will be placed on top of closed landfills (it contains bacteria that can eat up some of the methane generated underneath) and sold to contractors for landscaping purposes, Gordichuk said. “It’ll all get reused, 100 per cent.”

Residents will eventually be able to access the compost through the city.

There won’t be any excess material, Gordichuk said, adding the city’s compost pile was, perhaps ironically, looking lower than usual before the storm hit.

An estimated cost of processing the wood waste was not available Thursday.

Approximately 30,000 city-owned trees were damaged in the winter storm that hit the province over the Thanksgiving weekend. No estimate has been provided for damage on private property.

Gordichuk said residents should ensure they follow guidelines with load security before making a trip to a depot.

“We do appreciate the residents that are jumping in to help, but that good will would get depleted pretty quickly if a branch fell off a trailer that wasn’t secured properly and ended up in a front seat of somebody else’s car,” he said.

Over the weekend, RCMP handed out five tickets to people whose loads of post-storm debris were not properly secured under the Highway Traffic Act regulations.

Spokesman Paul Manaigre said the focus was not planned, but rather, officers were in the Brady Road area conducting traffic enforcement when issues were observed.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie