It’s sewage-flavoured Groundhog Day in Greater Victoria. In the Bill Murray movie, the main character is caught in a time loop, waking up each morning to find it’s still Groundhog Day. For the capital region, the nightmare is waking up each morning to a sewage plant that just doesn’t get built.
The regional sewage-treatment plant, back on track after being derailed in 2014 when Esquimalt refused to grant the project a zoning variance for the McLoughlin Point site, must go through another rezoning process. This comes after the expert panel in charge of the project stated in September that the revised plan met all of Esquimalt’s zoning and design requirements, and that the municipality could not block the project if it wanted to.
But this week, Jane Bird, chairwoman of the Core Area Waste Water Treatment Project Board, says staff went through the plan “line by line” and “it was clear there wasn’t complete alignment.” She said the best way to deal with the issue is for Esquimalt to initiate a rezoning.
As our headline said on Thursday, here we go again.
This is not a case of Esquimalt being obstructive, it’s a matter of the sewage panel being thorough and getting things right. Not to do so would be irresponsible. But why, in a project that has been so thoroughly discussed and dissected, could this “misalignment” have been overlooked?
There’s no reason to believe Esquimalt council will take this as an opportunity to block the sewage project. In fact, Bird is optimistic, praising Esquimalt staff and calling it “a positive sign” that Esquimalt council has approved working toward a timetable that includes holding a public hearing Feb. 20 and having the rezoning considered by council by Feb. 27.
And Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who chairs the Capital Regional District sewage committee, doesn’t agree with View Royal Mayor David Screech, who said: “I think the risks [of rezoning] are enormous and I don’t know why we would feel that the sentiment of Esquimalt council is any different now than it was before.”
Helps said: “We have a very willing Esquimalt council — of course, we don’t want to fetter their discretion — that’s been working really hard, both at a staff level and at a political level with the project board.”
It should be a straightforward process and it should go smoothly, but those who are nervous have good reason. The zoning application in 2014 was about a minor change in dimensions, but the zoning process went way off topic, helped in no small part by opponents of the sewage plan who saw an opportunity to thwart the project.
That resulted in 18 months of dithering that resulted in little progress until the province stepped in and put the expert panel in charge. That panel went over all the data and options, and came to the conclusion that building the plant at McLoughlin Point was the best choice. It was the original plan, with a few tweaks.
We hope this rezoning process is done by the book without being sidetracked by those who believe we don’t need to treat our sewage, or who believe the plant should be built somewhere else. Those issues have been settled.
We also hope the province is standing by to set the project back on course if the process goes awry. This issue is far bigger than one municipality.
We hope the day is not too far away when residents of Greater Victoria can wake up in the morning without a dreadful cloud of sewage déjà vu hanging over their heads.
