District of North Vancouver council has abandoned plans to heat the wave pool at Karen Magnussen Recreation Centre with green clippings.
The Bio-Mass enterprise was slated to cut the 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide belched out annually by the centre's old natural gas boilers by 300 to 350 tonnes, according to district energy project manager Steve Jenkins. The switch to a more environmentally friendly heating source was announced in a 2013 event featuring North Vancouver MP Andrew Saxton, federal transportation minister Steven Fletcher and district Mayor Richard Walton.
Council announced the project's cancellation Nov. 3 after making the decision at a closed meeting Oct. 20.
The district received a $632,000 federal and provincial grant in 2013 to fund the project and planned to have the wood-fed system in place earlier this year. However, implementation was far more expensive than anticipated, according to Walton. "We ended up effectively having a $630,000 grant that was $600,000 short," he said.
Even the cheapest of project bids was approximately $1.2 million with other proposals at around $1.5 million.
The green waste program would have saved the municipality $12,000 to $15,000 each year in wood removal and disposal costs, but the shortfall was simply too great to overcome, according to Walton.
The district is currently attempting to achieve the same goal with a different retrofit, including capturing wasted heat from the ice plant and improving sealing in the building. The district is also examining a new ceiling over the ice rink that would minimize heat radiation, ostensibly reducing refrigeration costs.
The retrofit is tentatively scheduled to be complete by the end of 2015.
