Central Frontenac Township Looks at Waste
Clear Bags To Be Replaced With Bag Tags
Within a short time, Central Frontenac residents will no longer be placing their non-recyclable waste in bags that they purchase from the township.
Instead, it will be a back to the future situation, as the township will be selling bag tags which must be affixed to garbage, bagged in a clear bag, purchased elsewhere.
The clear bag requirement, which was the basis of the decision to have the township buy bags and resale them to residents in the first place, will remain under the new system.
Township Staff reported that they are already low on clear bags, and will be making the transition to the new bag tags in the coming months.
At their regular meeting on April 14, Council received and adopted a report on the matter by Amanda Fellows and Lance Cowdy of the Public Works department.
The report was presented at this time, partly because the township is due to put in an order for new bags.
The cost of bags is 26 cents per bag according to the report, and they are sold at a loss to residents for $1.50 per bag. Bag tags are cheap, about 4 cents, so even if the price dropped to $1, the sale of bag tags will generate some more revenue for the waste department.
The report talked about the amount of staff time that the township bag system eats up.
“Approximately every six weeks, Public Works staff must allocate time to unload shipments, organise and store the inventory, label boxes, and update tracking spreadsheets. This process typically involves three to four staff members. A bag tag system would significantly reduce these administrative and handling requirements, allowing staff to focus on higher-priority operational tasks,” said the report.
The report also said that Central Frontenac is one of the last townships that still use this system, with most having already switched back to bag tags in recent years.
Most of the comments from Council focussed on the logistics of the changeover, but Councillor Bill Everett opposed the changeover, based on his experience as a garbage hauler and former member of the township's waste management system.
“I fundamentally oppose bag tags,” he said.
He recounted that in 2011, when he was a member of the waste management committee that brought in the township bags, they did an audit of the use of bag tags in 2008. He said that they found that the township sold 52,000 tags, and in that year his company, which hauled garbage for 3% of the population at most, deposited over 20,000 bags with tags, that year in the waste sites.
“I've seen people pull tags off bags as they were throwing them on the pile. I've seen tags cut in four. I think we are actually going to lose money, as opposed to saving money,” he said.
Councillor Nicki Gowdy asked why the report said the cost of a new shipment of bags at this time, only 1/4 of the way through the year, is not included in the 2026 township budget.
Public Works Manager Steve Gould said that there were bags left at the end of last year, but they are gone now. Amanda Fellows said that the price goes up every time she orders the bags, which are a specialised, bio-degradable bag.
Council sided with the staff report, and a bylaw will be prepared and returned to Council. A publicity campaign will get underway soon in order to transition to bag tags in the coming months.
Waste Site Expansion Application Contemplated
At the March 10 meeting, a report from Cambium Engineering indicated that Central Frontenac has approximately 20 years of dump life left at its Olden site, which will become the only active landfill within the next year or two, when the Wemp Road site near Sharbot Lake will cease to be an active site and will become a transfer station.
Councillor Gowdy noted at that time that the previous study by Cambium, in 2020, had estimated a 30 window for the Olden site.
“In 6 years, we lost 4 years of life on that site. What will happen over the next 6 years,” she said, asking Staff to go back to Cambium to see what could be done to extend the life of the Olden site.
In a report to Council at this meeting, Staff reported back that Cambium had provided two options for expanding the life of the Olden site, “however, the process is both costly and time-intensive, with no guarantee of approval.”
One option, which if successful, would result in an increase of 70,000 cubic feet (20 years of capacity) at the site, would cost between $500,000 and $750,000 and take 5-7 years. The other would result in an increase of 40,000 cubic feet (12 years of capacity) cost up to $250,000 and take 3-5 years.
Neither option carries any guarantee of success.
In their letter to the township, Cambium pointed out that the limitations of the Olden site made expansion difficult.
“Considering the Olden waste site, the current Design and Operations Plan (Golder, 2013) was submitted and approved by the Ministry to maximize the current licensed site area. Given the presence of wetlands to the north and west and bedrock to the south and east, expansion of the current footprint is not considered possible. There is a possibility of having a second waste footprint in the south portion of Township-owned lands at the Olden facility. At this time, it is unclear what capacity of waste could be landfilled in this area and if the Ministry would be supportive.”
The letter concluded that a way to pursue that possibility would be to do a feasibility study first, and then hold a pre-consultation meeting with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment before proceeding with a formal application.
Both the Cambium letter and the staff report emphasised that the most effective means of maintaining or increasing the Olden Waste Site as an active landfill, is through increased waste diversion.
Council asked Staff to prepare a more detailed report, and come back to council.
Swearing in
Bill MacDonald was sworn in to serve out the term as a councillor for Ward 3 (Oso). MacDonald said he was appointed to council to serve out a term once before, over 35 years ago in Oso Township, and was happy to do so again, after serving for many years in various roles, in Central Frontenac and Frontenac County, as an elected official in the interim.
Economic Development Committee
Council appointed two new members to the committee. Bill MacDonald replaces Duncan McGregor as a council rep, and Candace Harrington was appointed as a community rep on the committee.
Building Department Seeing Better numbers
Chief Building Official Andy Dillon reported that the construction value of permits increased in the first three months of 2026 ($2.6 million) as compared to 2025 ($2.2 million), although they are still lower than the 2024 ($3 million) numbers. Also, the revenue for the department is $11,000 at this point in 2026, as it was at the same time last year.
Delegations
Before conducting the business of the meeting, the township received the annual report about planning services at the township and county levels from Sonya Bolton, Manager of Community Planning for Frontenac County. The department has been able to divert some of its efforts towards regional planning through the simplification of the routine planning application process under a “delegated authority process” that does not involve Council in about 45% of planning matters. And even though planning applications are steadily increasing in the township, planning costs are becoming marginally lower. The county department does local planning for North Frontenac, Central Frontenac and Frontenac Islands. Central Frontenac is the busiest of the three for them.
