Cumbersome bureaucracy is the wrong reason for the Capital Regional District to abandon its pursuit of federal land for sewage-treatment facilities.
The CRD has been ordered to conform its sewage treatment to the federal and provincial sewage and wastewater regulations, and to stop discharging its sewage into the ocean. It has chosen a former petroleum-storage facility on McLoughlin Point as the site for the wastewater treatment plant, but needs more land for a component of the project that will process biosolids, the sludge left over the sewage is treated.
The original plan was to pump the sludge to the Hartland landfill, where a “biosolids energy centre” would turn the sludge into gas or solid fuel. Hoping to avoid the disruption of building an 18-kilometre pipeline, the CRD started looking for a site closer to the proposed McLoughlin Point plant.
In March, the CRD announced it had paid $17 million for the 1.7-hectare Wilson Foods property on Viewfield Road in Esquimalt, a decision that alarmed Esquimalt residents.
Looking at the possibility of keeping the two components of the project close together, the CRD had asked the federal government in February to sell or lease 1.6 hectares of Department of National Defence land next to the McLoughlin site. In April, the district expressed interested in four hectares on Macaulay Point that would have accommodated both components.
Either one of those proposals would have been preferrable to putting the biosolids plant in an Esquimalt neighbourhood near businesses and residences.
But the CRD sewage committee has backed away from trying to obtain DND land, intimidated by the prospect of the lengthy, complex federal approval process.
It’s understandable that the committee doesn’t want the sewage project bogged down in bureaucratic mire. Delays would be costly; potential contractors require certainty.
Considering that one of the main motivating factors behind the project is to make the region’s sewage disposal conform to federal regulations, it seems only right that Ottawa should be amenable to removing roadblocks. The assessment of the proposed sites could be fast-tracked; the approval process could be streamlined.
If compelling reasons are found to reject those sites for the project, so be it, but at least try.
Besides, where is the perfect site of sewage treatment? There isn’t one — any site chosen will require accommodation and compromise.
When bureaucracy stifles a proposal, the tail is wagging the dog. Government machinery is supposed to serve the people, not make them slaves to regulatory processes.
Red tape, it appears, has strangled what might have been a good plan. Now we’ll never know.
