Re: “Sewage group has little public support,” letter, June 11.
I am not a member of the RITE group, nor have I attended any of their meetings, but I did teach university students how to design and interpret surveys.
Faced with choosing from among 18 criteria for eastside sewage treatment, it is a no-brainer that “removal of harmful materials from entering water and/or land” is ranked highest because it is the rationale for improving our sewage system in the first place. In reality, most or all of the criteria are important to the public.
If the survey had asked how important each individual criterion is to us, the “ability to treat wastewater beyond secondary levels” would have come out higher, because if we believe (as I do) that flushing our unwanted medications and plastic nanoparticles into the sewage system is harmful to the environment, then both criteria are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other.
Even within the constraints of the Ipsos Reid survey, having post-secondary treatment comes fifth out of 18 criteria. More telling, at the end of a long day in the eastside sewage workshop at the University of Victoria on May 30, participants complained about the lack of attention in the dialogue to treating chemicals and nanoparticles in our sewage and everyone applauded.
Not exactly a fringe-group reaction, but one shared by almost every resident that I talk to.
Beware the headlines that come out of polls and surveys.
Anne Whyte
Saanich
