Calgary Council: Ski Hill Proposal Faces Methane Hurdle

CALGARY — Someone on Reddit wants to turn the city's active garbage dump into a ski hill. Yes, really.

A petition floating around the platform proposes converting the Shepard Landfill—lovingly nicknamed the "Walden/Chaparral Dump Hill"—into a full-blown winter sports destination, complete with a t-bar lift on the "east face" and a relocated coffee shop to warm up après-ski. The coffee shop detail isn't random: it's the one being moved from the Bow River thanks to those feeder main upgrades nobody asked for after the 2024 Bowness water main crisis.

There's just one problem. The Shepard Landfill isn't some forgotten mound waiting for a second act. It's a working industrial site packed with a major composting facility and enough methane gas capture infrastructure to make city engineers nervous.

The Money Problem

Even if you ignore the whole "active dump" issue, the math is ugly. A basic ski hill starts at $35 million—and that's before anyone calculates the cost of making a landfill safe enough for humans to schuss down. The project isn't in the City of Calgary's current 2023-2026 Capital Budget, which is no surprise given Council's "GamePLAN" recreation strategy already forecasts needing $200-$250 million annually for 25 years just to keep up with all recreation projects citywide.

Translation: Every ski hill dollar is a dollar stolen from someone else's rec centre.

The Technical Nightmare

City of Calgary Waste & Recycling Services would almost certainly veto this on principle. Ground settling, geotechnical instability, methane gas management—pick your bureaucratic roadblock. The landfill has been running a gas capture system since 2005, and a massive expansion to the Calgary Composting Facility next door broke ground in May 2024. That project, set to wrap in late 2025, will process an additional 60,000 tonnes of waste and capture biogas.

ENMAX has skin in the game too, having scored over $3 million from Emissions Reduction Alberta to study a commercial-scale carbon capture unit at the adjacent Shepard Energy Centre. They're unlikely to cheer for ski boots stomping around their future carbon cash cow.

The Community Question

Walden and Chaparral residents would also get a say, and their concerns are predictable: composting facility odour, traffic chaos, and whether it's wise to send kids careening down a hill full of decomposing garbage and trapped methane.

If anyone's serious about pushing this forward, they'd need to convince Ward 14 Councillor Landon Johnston—elected in October 2025—to file a Notice of Motion. That would kick it to the Community Development Committee for vetting before a full Council vote.

City Administration is currently knee-deep in implementing the new Calgary Plan, an integrated land use and transportation strategy expected to hit the Infrastructure and Planning Committee in Q2 2026. So they've got bigger fights brewing.

For now, the ski hill remains what it is: a Reddit fever dream with a $35 million price tag and a methane problem.