It astonishes me that anyone could believe that dumping more than 18 million kilograms a year of untreated municipal waste into our near-shore marine environment is a sustainable activity, especially when you consider how the tidal currents circulate within the Victoria bight. That information is readily available in a current atlas for Juan de Fuca Strait published by the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry report, a blue-ribbon panel of scientists, recommended a minimum level of secondary treatment for the Capital Regional District. The “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” argumentation advanced by sewage-treatment critics is tiresome and is not a scientific rationale for continuing to pollute.
Forward-thinking scientists know there are research gaps and work to mitigate — not deny — threats to the marine environment and public health. They understand the concept of bioaccumulation and support precautionary principles.
Given the sheer volume and complexity of our municipal waste and the weakened and often redundant tidal currents throughout the Victoria bight, particularly during the ebb phase of the tide, there is little doubt that the effects are all negative.
An obvious example would be the regulations that restrict recreational harvest of swimming scallops from Area 19, a closure that includes the entire seabed from Race Rocks to Sidney.
Perhaps a less-obvious example is that our magnificent resident orcas are the most contaminated population of whales known to science, a situation the region’s torrent of untreated municipal wastewater could not possibly be helping.
Allan Crow, commercial fisherman
East Sooke
