About the Commission

The Beaver Regional Waste Management Services Commission (BRWMSC) was established under Order-In-Council 124/92 and confirmed under Ministerial Order 314/92. The Commission is the legal successor to the Beaver Regional Waste Management Authority and the Municipal Government Act, Part 15.1, serves as the fundamental basis for its governance.

The Commission has five shareholders including; the Town of Tofield, the Town of Viking, the Village of Ryley, the Village of Holden and Beaver County. Board representatives appointed to the Commission must be sitting members of the elected councils of the shareholder’s jurisdiction.

At its inception the Commission operated a small regional landfill at Ryley, taking in approximately 5000 tonne per year. The price per tonne was prohibitive. Recognizing the impermeable clay basin and lack of any underlying sustainable aquifers, it was decided that the Ryley landfill was a desirable area for a large landfill. Commencing in 1993 the Commission undertook to obtain approvals for the expansion of the facility to take large volumes of waste. By 1995 the approvals were in place and Laidlaw Waste Services from the City of Edmonton hauled their first load into a newly engineered cell in early October of that same year.

Laidlaw Waste Services was subsequently bought out by Canadian Waste Services in 1998 and they continued as the operator of the site, sub-contracted by the Commission untill December 31, 2005. The Beaver Regional Sanitary Landfill Class II now accepts approximately 1/3 of the municipal solid waste (msw) from the City of Edmonton.

In 1999 an Industry Canada Competition Tribunal ruled that Canada Waste Services had an effective monopoly in the Alberta Capital Region and therefore must forfeit the operation of the Beaver Regional Landfill as of December 31, 2005. The Commission took over the operation on January 2, 2006.

Through the acquisition of adjacent properties to the landfill, the facility in terms of capacity is one of the largest in North America, if not the largest. The operation benefits the entire region through reduced dependence on taxpayers to fund the facility and the implementation of the most advanced automated waste collection system on the continent.