Re: “McLoughlin plant ruled out,” Sept. 13.
The McLoughlin sewage site scheme has been dead for nearly a year and a half. Over the past year, the Capital Regional District has brought out many new ideas for various treatment technologies and potential treatment sites with extensive public consultation through the eastside and westside committees.
The new CRD independent technical oversight panel’s first public report dated Sept. 4 identified the total absence of a CRD project-management plan to deliver sewage-treatment-system decisions from the huge range of technology ideas, 28 possible sites and public attitudes now on the table. The new panel chair would have to prepare the project-management plan for the CRD.
The agreement signed in March 2015 by the CRD to maintain $253 million of federal funding requires that a complete new treatment system is approved by the province with all treatment sites and disposal facilities defined, approved and secured by March 2016. This extremely tight schedule is already running three to four months late.
The sets of treatment and site options available for detailed engineering and cost evaluations will not be defined until mid-October, about three-and-a-half months after the agreed June deadline date. The CRD now wants to spend another $1.3 million of local taxpayer money over the next few months, but there is not enough time to catch up.
Goodbye, McLoughlin. Federal funding of $253 million is also dead. Very expensive funeral arrangements will be announced soon.
David Langley
Victoria
