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CRD approves borrowing of up to $100 million for sewage treatment

Capital Regional District directors have approved borrowing up to $100 million toward a sewage-treatment building project. Approval came this week despite the objection of a handful of directors. “I think we should reconsider this.
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Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins at Wilson Foods on Viewfield Road, the location of a proposed biosolids treatment plant.

Capital Regional District directors have approved borrowing up to $100 million toward a sewage-treatment building project.

Approval came this week despite the objection of a handful of directors.

“I think we should reconsider this. It’s a significant amount of money, and I can’t support it,” said Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins, who added the other partners in the $783-million sewage-treatment project — the provincial and the federal governments — should be putting up the funds.

“Why are we doing the borrowing? Those proponents that signed on to this project have very deep pockets and normal process would be that they are financing that project up front,” Desjardins said.

“But we’re not being paid by the province until the good job is done, so why would we put our taxpayers at risk for borrowing up front?”

Saanich Coun. Vic Derman said that the region should wait at least until after the provincial election before considering the borrowing.

“There may be some changes, who knows?” Derman said.

“I think this is an inappropriate time to put that kind of public money at risk. I don’t see us spending $100 million over the next two or three months.”

CRC corporate services general manager Diana Lokken said the bylaw simply provides the authority for borrowing — making available the cash flow as needed for sewage treatment costs that are in the CRD budget for the next year.

“This does not say that $100 million is being borrowed today, and that is not the intent,” Lokken said.

“We had the cash flow in the budget that was adopted at the last meeting, and this provides the funding to cover the costs that are projected for this year and for part of next year,” she added.

CRD sewage committee chairwoman Denise Blackwell said the first expenditure to be covered by the borrowing will be for the Craigflower pump station —which would be required regardless of whether or not a treatment plant was built.

The sewage treatment plan envisions a treatment facility at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt.

The CRD also announced last month that it had paid $17 million for a 4.2-acre Wilson Foods warehouse site on Viewfield Road in Esquimalt as a potential location for a sewage treatment biosolids facility which would turn sludge — leftover material from treatment — into fuel.

The CRD had originally planned for a biosolids facility at Hartland landfill in Saanich, connected by an 18-kilometre pipe to McLoughlin Point.

The entire project is expected to be built and operational by 2018, with the federal and provincial governments agreeing to pay two-thirds of the cost.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com