Photo by Whitehorse Star
Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn
Keno residents receive new waste collection equipment
The Yukon government has provided new household waste collection equipment to the residents of Keno City to support a regularly scheduled waste pickup service by the Hecla Mining Company.
The Yukon government has provided new household waste collection equipment to the residents of Keno City to support a regularly scheduled waste pickup service by the Hecla Mining Company.
Each household in Keno will receive bear-resistant garbage and recycling carts, the government said Wednesday.
The carts will form part of a waste collection service that will be available in the community once the government closes the community waste transfer station.
A trailer provided by the government will assist Hecla in transporting the waste to a nearby facility.
The Keno waste transfer station will close soon.
The closure is meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and costs from regularly transporting waste to the Whitehorse Waste Management Facility.
“Thank you to the residents of Keno for your ideas and dialogue about waste management over recent months and thank you to the Hecla Mining Company for providing a new household waste collection service to Keno,” said Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn.
“The Government of Yukon is supporting this service by providing carts and the transport trailer. We commend Hecla’s innovative approach as the Yukon moves towards a more sustainable, regional model of solid waste management.
“We will continue working with residents and stakeholders in each region of the territory to modernize the territory’s waste management system for the benefit of all Yukoners and generations to come,” Mostyn added.
Wayne Zigarlick, the vice-president of operations and the general manager at Hecla’s Keno Hill operations, said the company “is pleased to help offset the closure of the local transfer station by providing refuse haulage removal to Keno residents.”
The government’s community operations branch manages 16 solid waste facilities and supports 13 recycling depots and two recycling processors across the Yukon.
“Consistent with Our Clean Future, the Yukon government is moving toward reducing carbon emissions from waste through organics composting and reducing waste hauling distances,” the government said.
The nine households in Keno have each received a bear-resistant cart for waste and a bear-resistant bin for recycling.
An additional five waste bins and five recycling bins were provided to the community to account for the expanded summer population.
The government is closing several small rural waste facilities around the territory.
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Comments (3)
Up 6 Down 4
Nathan Living on Dec 3, 2022 at 5:47 pm
There is only a handful of residents, they should pool their resources and do it themselves.
Welfare state from cradle to grave.
Up 6 Down 4
bonanzajoe on Dec 2, 2022 at 4:17 pm
Gee, the government built - and paid for mind you - a new outhouse for Keno. Awesome!
Up 30 Down 12
Amber Smith on Dec 1, 2022 at 2:55 pm
"Reduce emissions from regulary transporting waste to the Whitehorse Waste Management Facility". Newsflash, the transfer station doesn't require hauling for 7 months from November to end of May. The real reason it's closing is because we're in a Liberal riding with no one to oppose them. Braeburn, Silver City and Johnson's Crossing are all YP ridings. No way they'd be able to get those closed. Interesting how no steps have been taken thus far to close them. There is one year left on the Keno transfer station permit, so why the tearing hurry to shut it? Because they have to get this done before the CASA agreement runs out at the end of January. Keno has embarrased YG badly, particularly on rural fire protection, so Keno must be punished.
Do not believe the rosy spin YG is putting out. This is a hand off, pure and simple. Were they actually concerned about any of the reasons they use for the closure like dump shopping, "nasty stuff" going where it shouldn't etc., they would have put a gate and lock on our site years ago while they sorted out the negotiations with Mayo, the hoped for "regional" facility. But they haven't. And they still haven't signed the regional agreement so why is the transfer station closing now?
There has been no thought to tourist-produced garbage. No thought to the fact the area is on a mining boom, bringing in lots of folks. Now they are ripping out the last piece of government infrastructure out of Keno. We need more capacity to meet the growing demands of the area, not less.
Don't believe the hype! There are many parts of the story that you aren't being told and there is much more going on here. The real story is the piece by piece decommissioning of a small, heritage community.
Anyone living in an unincorporated, unplanned community should be concerned with what's unfolding here. It's not about solid waste, it's about government bullying a small tax paying community.