Re: “Bogus survey muddles issue,” editorial, and “Did the CRD select the best sewage-treatment plan?” April 30.
I am glad to see Shaun Peck’s informed piece in the Times Colonist, but I was surprised to see, in the editorial, the use of the kinds of words Seaterra director Albert Sweetnam uses (“dumping raw sewage”) and a criticism of the Sewage Treatment Action Group’s survey, substituting questions which are no improvement, if measured by the editorial’s standards.
The objection to the wording of the survey equally applies to the question proposed as an improvement: “Do you favour discharge of sewage into the ocean?” How imprecise is that? What’s more, it’s based on an inaccurate premise since no one is suggesting such a thing. Peck’s piece states that the discharge is “99.9 per cent water and screened to six millimetres.”
Objections to the word “concerned” could equally be applied to “favour.”
As the editorial admits, the sewage question is complicated and not easily answered by yes or no questions, and yet its alternatives ask for such answers. The survey was not useless in that it indicated how widespread was the unease about the sewage plans, giving the organization that created it some idea of the general attitudes of the public. It did not claim to provide specifics, and the bias of the authors was stated at the beginning.
This is more than can be said of some of the information Seaterra produces to support its cause.
Anne Spencer
Victoria
