Sludge Watch ==> Strange and Wonderful Things to do with Sewage

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Strange and wonderful things to do with sewage
Carolyn Heiman ...Times Colonist ...Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The story was intended as light banter -- really no more than a joke. The
man who shoulders much of the responsibility for ensuring that the Capital
Regional District politicians have the information they need to move forward
on sewage treatment, recounted visiting a Chinese city where residential
toilets had conversion systems resulted in the owner's house getting a gas
supply for their kitchen stove.

Imagine, said Dwayne Kalynchuk, the general manager of environmental
services, every Victorian having a fuel connection between their toilet and
barbecue.

Imagine indeed. After taking a moment to get over the yuk factor, I
recognized that I have my own indoctrinated notions of sewage being
something ideally pushed not only from mind, but disposed as far away from
source as possible. A toilet-to-kitchen connection seemed too close. But is
it really something to be so squeamish about? Perhaps like politicians and
regional bureaucrats now forced to deal head on with the topic of sewage, I
needed to open my mind to possibilities that might exist beyond putting it
in a football field-sized pond in someone else's neighbourhood.

Those possibilities are endless if you listen to Stephen Salter, a
professional engineer involved with Victoria Sewage Alliance, an
organization that has been agitating for sewage treatment in the region.

Salter has nearly made a career of looking at alternative methods of
treatment. He has binder full of approaches that have been tried in other
places, and in October he's travelling to Kristianstad, Sweden, to check out
their sewage innovations. In particular, he's lobbying for the region to
have a design competition that could showcase treatments not contemplated to
date. They're the kind of treatments that would convert sewage into biogas
used to fuel buses and cars and heat homes. It's done in other
jurisdictions, so why not in the capital region, Salter suggests.

>From California to Switzerland he has found examples of cities that use
sewage as a resource, not a waste. These are places that have taken sewage
and all of its components -- fat, grease, organic material, sludge,
minerals, water -- to make fuel, fertilizer, water for irrigation and even
ash containing metals and minerals that is rerouted to a mine and blended
with ore.

Naysayers are quick to dump on Salter's ideas, saying they are too expensive
or impractical for the region. But this may be old-style thinking at work.

Joe Van Belleghem, of Windmill Developments, recently recounted his reaction
to a cost estimate to have the Dockside Green residential development have
its own in-house sewage treatment.

"My jaw nearly dropped," said Van Belleghem. Idealism might have been
stomped out by economic assumptions if Van Belleghem didn't continue to
challenge the premise the estimates were made on.

He didn't try to make the sewage treatment cheaper. Instead, he factored in
costs he'd save with the system. How much would he save if he didn't have to
connect to the city's sewage system? Did the estimate take into account that
that Dockside Green residents would require less treatment because of the
water-saving appliances and devices that would be installed? What about the
value of the treated water that will be used for irrigation?

Tallied up, the high cost of in-house treatment not only made sense, Van
Belleghem figures its operation will make money.

If all of this sounds a little implausible, just cast back 20 years or so.
Did we ever think we'd be wearing cosy jackets made from recycled plastic
pop bottles? At some point it would have sounded crazy to suggest that we'd
supply 1,600 homes with electricity from garbage at Hartland landfill. We're
told the 2010 Olympic Village will get its heating from its sewage. This
year The Economist reported on a San Francisco project to make valuable
methane out of dog feces diverted out of the landfill by pet owners. The
city figured that pet waste coming from its 120,000 canine residents
accounted for four per cent of household refuse. All of these are strange,
but true examples. No joking.

Carolyn Heiman writes Wednesday in the Times Colonist. She can be reached at
cheiman at tc.canwest