One of the factors that killed the proposed massive sewage-treatment project for the capital region was the perception that the plan was foisted on the public without sufficient consultation. Municipalities trying to meet federal and provincial funding deadlines are determined that won’t happen again.
Two efforts are underway to draw up new plans and find new sites to handle the region’s sewage. While substantial opposition still exists to changing the way we treat our sewage, both the province and the federal governments insist we stop discharging it untreated into the ocean. That’s highly unlikely to change.
Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay have formed an east-side group to develop plans and solutions; on the west side, Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Langford and the Songhees First Nation have banded together.
A key component is the intensive process in seeking public input. For the east-side group, that starts today at 7 p.m. with a briefing and workshop at the Royal B.C. Museum.
You don’t want a sewage plant in your backyard? Here’s your chance to say so, but it would be helpful if you had an idea where such a plant could be built. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, in a meeting with the Times Colonist editorial board this week, was adamant the officials sincerely want to hear from the public.
It took four years for the Capital Regional District to settle on McLoughlin Point as the site for the sewage-treatment plant. The mayor says the hope is that the west-side process will come together with the east-side process to identify sites by the end of June.
Helps, who chairs the East Side Select Committee as well as the CRD’s Core Area Liquid Waste Committee, is under no illusion that the hunt for a site or sites will be easy. “I anticipate that it’s going to be a hard slog,” she said.
There’s work to be done and the door is open for discussion. There’s little chance the process will come up with a plan everyone will like, but if the public gets involved, it should develop a plan that most people can accept.
