The municipalities of L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Chichester and Sheenboro are facing some pushback from residents around the new curbside waste collection system being rolled out this month. 

The new system will eventually require residents to dispose of their garbage, recycling and compost products in bins that are to be left at the end of their laneways or private roads, to be collected by a truck. So far, only curbside recycling pick-up is being implemented, with compost and garbage collection set to begin in February. 

This is a shift from the previous system, which saw residents independently dispose of their garbage and recycling at the municipalities’ respective transfer stations. 

Pontiac Ouest municipalities are not the only ones adopting the new collection method this winter. Bryson, Campbell’s Bay, Chichester, Portage-du-Fort,  Waltham, Shawville and Mansfield-et-Pontefract are all transitioning to or expanding curbside pickup of some kind. 

In Pontiac Ouest municipalities, where many residents live down long private roads, this shift is causing some friction. The community packed Chapeau’s Harrington Community Centre for a meeting on Wednesday evening to share some of their frustrations and get some answers about how the new collection system is supposed to work. 

Among the over 200 people in attendance was Louis Lair, a former councillor with the municipality who lost his seat when he lost a bid for mayor to current mayor Corey Spence in 2021. 

In a phone call following the meeting, Lair said his major concerns were that the municipality has many private roads where the trucks won’t collect waste, which means people will need to get their bins to the end of these roads for pick-up, and that this will be especially difficult for the municipality’s many seniors. 

“For me, I’m going to be 75 next month, I weigh 175 pounds,” he said. “Do you think I have the physical capability of dragging a garbage bin all the way to the road?” 

As he sees it, the municipality will have to adjust its planned waste program to accommodate those who cannot get their bins to the end of their laneways or shared private roads. 

“We’re a municipality where the demographics dictate that there have to be adjustments to the program,” Lair said. 

L’Isle-aux-Allumettes resident Denise Fitzpatrick did not attend the meeting, but said she is also not yet sure how she’s going to rearrange her waste disposal routine to respect the municipality’s new system. 

“Where we are, we have to go maybe half a mile to bring our bin up, either that or leave the bin there. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

She said she has yet to begin actually using the recycling bin that was delivered, choosing instead to continue using the transfer station, something she knows many are still doing. 

“What I heard from the guy who looks after the dump was that they had no choice, because it’s all done through Quebec, but before that I thought maybe they should have consulted everybody,” she said. 

In a follow-up phone call with THE EQUITY after the meeting, L’Isle-aux-Allumettes mayor Corey Spence said he understands the frustrations raised by the community last week, and was anticipating the described challenges. 

“We knew we had to hold a meeting. We wanted to inform the public. And we knew we had lots of challenges,” he said.

Regarding questions he faced about why the community wasn’t consulted earlier on the implementation of this program, he acknowledged that would have been a good thing to do.  

“Thinking back, it boils down to that, in reality, we were basically working inside funding and planning timelines, and they were happening so quickly. We basically had a year to come up with it, including putting contracts in place,” he offered as a reason why prior consultation hadn’t happened. 

“I think they felt it happened to the community, and not with the community, and I’ll take ownership on that [ . . . ] but that was never the intent.”

Spence said going forward, the municipality will be looking into ways it can accommodate residents with unique challenges when it comes to respecting the new waste collection system. 

He gave the example of one resident who attended the meeting to ask whether he could continue using the transfer station because a disability made it difficult to get a bin to the roadside every week. Spence said accommodating requests like these would be an easy way to help people out. 

“We have a system put in place. If you can’t prove that you’re within a special circumstance, then you’re going to have to use it like everybody else,” he said. 

Alicia Jones, director general for L’Isle-aux-Allumettes and Chichester, said she invites residents to come forward with ideas about how the new system could be better.

“This is a work in progress. The [pick-up] routes could get changed. There could be additional stops. We want to work with the residents to make this a successful program,” Jones said. 

“There are some possibilities of servicing some private roads, but we need to hear back from residents. [ . . . ] Because they’re private roads, the municipality does not have ownership, control or maintenance responsibility. There’s some roads that have only two people on them, whereas others have 25. So what I’m hoping to get out of this is that we can eventually have different solutions for different private roads, as it works for residents that live there.”  

Spence said for the time being, the municipality is keeping the transfer station open to residents, so they can continue to dispose of their garbage and recycling there, just as they used to. But he warned this won’t go on for ever, and that there will come a time when it will start costing people to dump their garbage at the transfer site instead of having it collected at the end of their road. 

“The transfer site is never going to close. If you want to bring your recycling to the transfer site, feel free. But if you bring your garbage there, you’re going to have to pay.” 

New system to bring financial kickbacks down the road

Nina Digioacchino, MRC Pontiac’s waste management coordinator, clarified that Quebec municipalities are not yet forced to adopt curbside pick-up programs, but are heavily incentivized to do so. 

“Quebec relies on financial incentives, particularly for composting,” she wrote in an email. “A key distinction should be made. Municipalities with [towns that have] a defined urban perimeter (such as Chapeau) must offer door-to-door composting, or a hybrid model with backyard composting, to qualify for provincial compensation, otherwise they are no longer getting any compensation back for the waste disposal levy.” 

Jones said L’Isle-aux-Allumettes had not been receiving this compensation for several years because it had yet to implement door-to-door composting. 

With the new system, this will change. The cost of door-to-door composting will depend on how much tonnage residents manage to divert from garbage cans into compost bins. The more residents compost, the more money the municipalities will get back. 

“It was difficult to answer questions the other night about costs,” Jones said. “Because if we’re able to divert more composting from the landfill, it’s not only going to cost us less in the treatment of the waste, we’re also going to make more money back from government incentive programs. So I can’t tell you exactly how much money we’ll be getting back because we won’t see our 2026 money until 2027.”

The municipality is responsible for all costs associated with garbage, while the costs associated with composting should be recovered by incentive programs; and the recycling is funded completely by the province (through the MRC). 

Spence said new costs associated with delivering the door-to-door collection service wouldn’t be public until the municipality’s 2026 budget is adopted on Jan. 27. 

With files from Caleb Nickerson.