The wait will soon be over for almost 300,000 Capital Regional District residents and businesses to have their wastewater treated. Soon, we’ll stop dumping an average of 82 million litres of raw sewage into Juan de Fuca Strait every day.
Mr. Floatie will finally be put to rest.
But groups proposing last-minute alternative plans are asking the CRD to press pause, even after nearly a decade of discussion, research and community consultations led to the development of the current plan and $501 million in federal and provincial funding to implement it.
Groups aiming to delay the Seaterra program ignore the time, effort and money that the CRD, local residents, businesses, environmental groups and qualified, professional experts have already put into the planning process. Proposed alternative plans consisting of sketchy “back of the napkin” cost estimates with no supporting details can’t stand up to scrutiny.
The CRD’s Seaterra program is implementing a plan developed by professional engineers, scientists and environmentalists, reviewed and approved by the B.C. Ministry of Environment and its business case vetted by the provincial and federal governments. The approved plan has been nearly a decade in the making and has been informed by numerous consultant reports, a North America-wide peer-review team and more than 160 open houses, public consultation and stakeholder meetings.
The approved approach offers the best value for money. During the planning phases of the project, the CRD board evaluated distributed models for wastewater treatment consisting of four, seven or 11 treatment plants located across the CRD. The 11-treatment-plant option resulted in capital costs of approximately $2 billion with annual operating costs at $33 million, both more than 225 per cent higher than the current plan.
Both a peer-review team and the CRD board decided that a centralized model was the best choice. The detailed analysis of the decentralized approach is available publicly.
The Seaterra program will provide preliminary, primary and secondary wastewater treatment and use proven technology. It will not provide tertiary treatment that produces water fit for non-potable uses, nor will it have its hefty price tag. It will bring the region in line with federal and provincial wastewater treatment regulations and help shed Victoria’s reputation as the last major Canadian city not to treat its wastewater.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, in its recently issued report, is incorrect in its calculations concerning Seaterra program costs. The budget is not “nebulous.” The Seaterra program’s $783-million budget includes inflation costs, the construction of the treatment plant, resource recovery centre, pump stations and conveyance-system upgrades. The CTF’s report is erroneous and has added inflation to a budget that already includes inflation.
Money is on the table to support the approved plan for secondary treatment, but it won’t be available forever. Funding commitments from the federal and provincial governments — two-thirds of the program cost — state the approved plan must be implemented by 2018. Right now, the program is on track and on budget, but there is little time to waste.
Wastewater treatment is a basic utility and social responsibility. Our free ride for wastewater treatment — dumping raw sewage into the ocean — is coming to an end. In the coming years, taxpayers in core-area municipalities will pay for wastewater treatment just like taxpayers who use the secondary treatment system in Central Saanich and on Saltspring Island and hundreds of communities across the country.
The Seaterra program will pull resources and nutrients from our wastewater like heat (to supply a district energy system), phosphorus (to produce fertilizer) and biosolids (to generate energy among other beneficial uses). These resources will generate income to offset program costs — the captured biogas alone will be able to heat more than 1,000 homes.
No treatment process — whether it is secondary or tertiary — will remove all the trace contaminants found in household cleaning products, pharmaceuticals and personal-care products put down our drains. Source control — keeping these contaminants out of our wastewater system in the first place — will continue to be paramount.
After years of planning, the Seaterra Program is in the implementation and construction phase. Construction on the Craigflower pump station has already commenced, and community meetings around how best to reduce construction impacts in affected neighbourhoods are ongoing. In a little over four years, the Seaterra program will be in operation and the CRD’s wastewater will be properly managed.
Soon, wastewater will stop being a dirty word and we’ll have a system in place we can all be proud of. Let’s get on with it.
Albert Sweetnam is program director of the Seaterra program.
