Our local politicians still have a “Get out of jail free” card, now that the current sewage treatment plan and process have been thoroughly discredited.
They have until June 30 to appeal the federal government’s “high risk” rating of our current sewage treatment system. Having our ocean-based treatment system redesignated as low risk to public health and the environment (which it most certainly is) would extend the deadline for compliance with new federal sewage treatment regulations until 2040. This would give us time to do what should have been done in the first place — conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis and an environmental impact study of both our current system and a variety of possible land-based treatment systems.
If our local politicians continue to push ahead with this ludicrous, billion-dollar environmental nightmare, and fail to ask for some breathing room from the feds while they still have the chance, it will amount to no less than a dereliction of duty on their part.
Graydon Gibson
Victoria