Proponents of the Capital Regional District’s sewage plan continue to confuse “how to do it” with “when to do it” by labelling critics as opponents of “when” in order to distract the public from the obvious deficiencies with the plan itself.
There is plenty of time to meet the deadlines and improve this plan. In fact, the whole plan can be thrown out the window and still meet the deadline.
The CRD project has a planned completion date of March 2018. The federal deadline for implementing sewage treatment is Dec. 31, 2020.
The difference is a nearly three-year window that can be used to improve the plan while still meeting the deadline. Consider that the original project, which was highly exploratory in nature, was developed between 2007 and 2010, and we now have the benefit of hindsight.
Continued protests are justified because the plan is just as awful as it was when it was signed off in 2010. The bulk of letters to editors, polls and interviews continue to indicate that the plan is not just in need of a tweak here and there, but deeply flawed.
Let’s start with the moniker “land-based sewage treatment.” The CRD plans to build a new marine outfall at McLoughlin Point that by the CRD staff’s own analysis will continue to flush 50 to 90 per cent of chemicals into the ocean.
The ocean easily assimilates the organic material in our sewage and is why the CRD built the existing system, but in the 40 years since the deep marine outfalls were constructed, our sewage has become a chemical cocktail. To remove these toxins requires a higher level of treatment than the CRD will be implementing.
The CRD plan is for secondary treatment, when many jurisdictions are moving to tertiary disinfected systems, having been on secondary systems for decades. Greater Victoria, it appears, will be catching up, only to fall behind as soon as the plant becomes operational.
The McLoughlin site being only 1.4 hectares, will require substantial changes to the CRD’s indicated design to meet Esquimalt’s Bylaw 2806. Will any space be left to add tertiary in the future? The CRD’s own peer-review team warned that this site was too small and the chickens will surely come home to roost in this regard.
If, and it’s a big if at this point, that tertiary treatment can be added later, what will be the fate of all that treated water? The plan is to flush that water back out to sea instead of reclaiming it for re-use.
Dockside Green and the Sooke Harbour House both perform tertiary treatment and reuse the water for irrigation and toilet flushing. Where will Greater Victoria be in 20 years? Still on lawn-watering restrictions and flushing this precious water out to sea.
This is why the CRD’s plan, ironically called “The Path Forward,” is so backward.
We need a sewage system now that allows us to develop the network to bring recycled water to every home in the same way that natural gas was eventually deployed throughout the suburbs. The cost will be minimal because road work and storm drain repairs are inevitable.
But an even bigger problem awaits: The federal deadline is looming, but will the CRD’s plan even meet the regulations?
CRD chairman Alastair Bryson announced at the McLoughlin public hearing last July that “elimination of water reuse and a wet-weather plan at Clover Point … and deferral of a decision on a West Shore plant for several decades, this results in a cost saving to all participants of over $180 million.”
The plan for a wet-weather facility was removed by the province in 2010, but federal regulations came in 2012 that ban marine discharges. Without this facility, screened sewage will continue to flush into the ocean at Clover Point during heavy rains.
Many of us opposed to the plan have become environmentalists along the way. In my mind, if you are environmentally minded, secondary sewage treatment with a new marine outfall is not only inadequate in our day and age, it simply won’t provide for the future. We must reject this plan and rethink it.
Richard Atwell is the campaign organizer for stopabadplan.ca.
