The regional sewage-treatment plan faces challenges. If seven municipalities decide to go it alone, the challenges will be multiplied by seven. It would be better to face these challenges together.
With the Capital Regional District’s land-based sewage-treatment plan in disarray, Victoria is looking at embarking on its own project. Mayor Dean Fortin and Coun. Marianne Alto say the city needs a Plan B, so they are seeking support for a motion asking city staff to prepare information on the implications of a Victoria-only treatment plant.
Their frustration is understandable. Eight years after the province ordered the CRD to move to land-based sewage treatment, there is little to show for years of effort, other than $48 million in costs flushed down the toilet and a region fractured over the issue.
And a complicated issue it is, not merely a question of factions divided for and against. Some people are sewage-treatment skeptics, saying land-based treatment is not necessary, that it will cause more harm than good. Others are NIMBYists, not eager to live next door to a sewage-treatment facility. Some favour land-based sewage treatment, but believe the CRD’s plan was not the right approach because it did not go far enough in removing trace chemicals and other potentially harmful substances from the effluent. Others advocate a network of smaller plants distributed around the region, rather than one large plant.
These divergent views are not the ravings of fringe lunatics, but the reasonings of reasonable and concerned people, backed by opinion and research from credible sources.
The status quo doesn’t appear to be an option. The province said secondary treatment should be in operation by 2018, and the federal government says it should happen by 2020. There doesn’t seem to be much prospect of changing the minds of senior governments — Environment Minister Mary Polak said she still expects those deadlines to be met — and scientific evidence might have little to do with it.
“The professional assessments of marine scientists from B.C. and Washington state, public health officials and engineers, that the present discharge of screened effluent via deep-sea outfalls is cost-effective and causes minimal damage to the marine environment, have been ignored,” wrote University of Victoria health economist Rebecca Warburton in a paper published recently in Public Sector Digest.
“Forcing the capital region to move to land-based sewage treatment is a triumph of optics over evidence.”
If so, it appears the optics are not likely to change, nor are the edicts from the provincial and federal governments. That train has left the station. Greater Victoria is not exactly a treasure trove of votes for the party in power in either capital.
If the municipalities strike out on their own, that means as many as seven projects will need to be studied and planned. Environmental assessments will be required. Networks will have to be designed. Municipal boundaries will have to be considered. And sites will need to be procured for each project, resulting in a sevenfold déjà vu of the McLoughlin Point controversy.
There will be much needless duplication of effort, something that Victoria Coun. Geoff Young estimates will at least double the final cost. Taxpayers should regard this development with a great deal of alarm.
A regional effort would be far better, but it has to be done in a collaborative spirit, with compromises and accommodations. A top-down approach would only create more resentment and result in more roadblocks.
Each municipality values its autonomy and unique character, and rightly so, but some things demand a regional solution. Nothing would be gained and much would be lost if each municipality embarked on its own sewage-treatment project.