As the core-area wastewater committee comes together on Wednesday to make its next decisions, I believe we must focus on the integration of our solid and liquid waste streams, and give the private sector an opportunity to design new systems that will save taxpayers money.
The Capital Regional District’s current practice is to manage kitchen scraps, municipal solid waste, yard and garden waste, and the biosolids generated from liquid waste separately. Finding an integrated system to manage all those types of waste has been a top priority of the CRD board for many years.
Following a committee of the whole meeting regarding this in October 2015, the board gave direction for the chair to set up a task force to determine whether what is called “integrated resource management” had validity and how the CRD could move forward.
As CRD chairwoman, I gave a mandate for the task force to examine whether IRM was real and feasible and what benefit it could provide to the region. I also gave direction for the task force to recommend how we might get there. As this would clearly influence the core-area sewage process already underway, they were given the tight time line to report back to the board by the end of February.
The work of this task force has been swift and is exciting. It indicates that the private sector can provide solutions for waste management in an integrated manner and seemingly at a much lower cost to the taxpayer. More than this, the ability to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigate climate-change issues is significant. It also has the ability to potentially extend the life of the Hartland landfill.
The IRM task force work and our wastewater treatment project must be brought together. We have heard a common message within both the task-force work and the core-area work: The private sector can provide substantial innovation, cost and environmental benefit to our wastewater treatment project. We cannot ignore that we are on an island, climate change is occurring and there are many ways other parts of the world use waste to their benefit.
The CRD board unanimously endorsed a charter to advance the sewage project, which laid out the goals and objectives, rules and the roles of all involved. Communities have been a part of this process, and have been consulted since the beginning in 2014. This includes residents, businesses and the councils of each community within the core.
On the westside, the process has also involved a technical committee of municipal engineering staff, a chief administrative officers committee to review all documentation and even a communications committee of municipal communications staff to get messages out at the community level. These inclusions are to be commended and show true collaboration and engagement toward a solution for the core region.
We are listening to the public, to the businesses and to the private sector. We have an opportunity to canvas the private sector and invite submissions of concepts for an integrated liquid- and solids-treatment solution.
This alternative approach, should it pass, will allow those innovative and cost-effective solutions to be more fully fleshed out. If these solutions require alternative sites within the project charter, there is a process.
We must ensure that we minimize taxpayer risk and financing, get innovation, and develop an innovative solution that responds to our changing climate. I believe we can reach a solution for the region that is innovative, environmentally responsible and cost-effective. We must be quick, recognizing timelines, but we must also be thoughtful.
Barbara Desjardins is chairwoman of the CRD board and mayor of the Township of Esquimalt.
