Re: “Leadership needed in sewage issue,” Oct. 14, and “Uninformed sentiment guides sewage debate,” letter, Oct. 16.
After more than 35 years of year-round commercial fishing and diving experience, working on and under local waters, I have an opinion regarding sewage treatment that is not based on sentiment.
In August 2013, I posted a diving video on YouTube entitled “CRD sewage outfall pollution in Victoria, B.C.,” showing the accumulation of the sewage outfall sediment and the highly degraded marine environment at Coghlan Rock, a rocky reef on the north side of Albert Head, about five kilometres from the Macaulay Point outfall.
Sediment and biological samples collected from Coghlan Rock and seven other locations between William Head and Trial Island all tested positive for unsafe levels of fecal coliform bacteria.
In the spring of 2013, the CRD’s own sampling revealed fecal coliform counts ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 fecal coliform per 100 millilitres in sediment samples collected from the seabed, beginning at the terminus of the Macaulay Point outfall and moving south for several kilometres toward Race Rocks. The health standards are about 200 fc/100 ml for swimming and 350 fc/100 ml for shellfish.
The local currents do not disperse the effluent into oblivion, but rather act effectively to expose the local seabed and marine life in the upstream and downstream tidal ranges of the outfalls to the fecal matter, microbes, micro-plastic and all the other chemical contaminants and pollutants in the 18 million kilograms of solid waste we pump into our near shore waters annually. There is no “away.”
Allan Crow
East Sooke
