After decades of fits and starts, shovels should be in the ground on the Capital Regional District’s new sewage treatment plant as early as next month.
“Isn’t that something? After all of these years, here we are,” said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, chair of the CRD’s sewage committee.
“Really, it’s a day that the region has been waiting for, for almost 30 years if you want to go back to the beginnings of the conversation.”
A progress report to CRD directors states simply: “We are now in a position to begin construction. To that end we are concluding the development phase of the project and beginning the construction phase.”
The report notes that the schedule is driven by the need to comply with a federal mandate to be treating sewage by Dec. 31, 2020.
“Construction will begin in April 2017. The early activities are centred around construction of the wastewater plant and the undersea forcemain from Ogden Point to McLoughlin Point,” it says.
All necessary zoning is in place in both Esquimalt and Victoria.
Harbour Resource Partners will build the treatment plant, a cross-harbour undersea forcemain between Ogden Point and McLoughlin Point, and a marine outfall off McLoughlin.
Construction is anticipated to begin at both McLoughlin and Ogden next month, with completion on Nov. 20, 2020.
The projected cost remains at $765 million. The treatment plant at McLoughlin Point is budgeted at $385 million. Residuals treatment at Hartland landfill is budgeted at $189 million and conveyancing— including pipelines and pumps — at $192 million.
Of the total, local taxpayers will be responsible for $306 million while $459 million will come from the federal and provincial governments.
The plan calls for Esquimalt to receive a $20-million amenity package for playing host to the treatment plant, including $17 million to be given to the township for capital projects in waterfront parks along with recreational and public-safety facilities.
Victoria’s Clover Point pump station is to see an extensive upgrade. The city is to consult with the public before finalizing amenities, which are expected to include a new off-road bicycle path along Dallas Road between Clover and Ogden points.
The CRD has also entered into agreements with the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. Terms include:
• The CRD will lease Rock Bay for use as a preparation area for four years.
• Esquimalt and Songhees liaison positions will be created to ensure the First Nations are engaged during construction.
• The CRD will contribute $480,000 to Xhanasung Holdings, a corporation owned by the First Nations, for upgrading Westbay Village Marina and RV Park.
• Contractors will make “meaningful efforts” to train and employ First Nations people for the project.
• The CRD will contribute to First Nations legal, professional and administrative costs related to the project, and the CRD will contribute to each nation for improvements to their reserves and for re-interment of ancestral remains that might be disturbed during construction.
A previous plan for McLoughlin Point, about eight years in the making, was shelved in 2014 when Esquimalt council refused to allow necessary zoning variances.
Last May, with provincial and federal funding deadlines looming, Community Minister Peter Fassbender stepped in. He took the process away from local politicians and turned it over to a panel called the Core Area Waste Water Treatment Project Board, headed by chairwoman Jane Bird.
“I know it’s been a long road getting here. It’s been an expensive road getting here, but at the end of the day, we have a project that is lower than the previous project to taxpayers cost wise, with a higher level of treatment,” Helps said.
