Sludge Watch ==> Victoria BC gets a deserved kick in the can

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin
'
In Victoria British Columbia it seems no one wants a sewage treatment plant 
in their neighbourhood.
This is a case where that new membrane technology might work...since it can 
turn sewage into cleanish water and a very dense sludge (as dry as 35% 
solids).  Those solids can then be used as alternative fuel in heat and 
energy production.

This would mean a smaller facility and one without the aeration ponds, 
lagoons, digesters, and other problematic -and expensive -  features. Plus 
the neighbours to the site could have cheap heating in the 
winter....distributed steam heat from the plant.  And maybe the shellfish 
and whales and dolphins could thrive without dodging clouds of shedded 
toilet paper, industrial cleansers,  pathogens and Mr Floaties.

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/278616_joel24.html



Monday, July 24, 2006

Victoria gets a deserved kick in can

By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST

A diplomatically worded research report, and an undiplomatic dose of 
international humiliation, have finally forced Victoria to get off the pot 
on sewage treatment.

On a hot Friday afternoon, British Columbia's environment minister ended 
three decades of bureaucratic delay with a five-paragraph order. It set down 
a schedule to end, once and for all, the dumping of untreated human and 
toxic waste into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The Capital Regional District was told that it must submit for approval, no 
later than June 30, 2007, a plan "detailing a fixed schedule for the 
provisions of sewage treatment."

By the end of this year, "I want to know what kind of plants they'll build, 
where they'll be located, and what the cost will be," Environment Minister 
Barry Penner said in a phone interview.

A Canadian provincial government is a kind of elected dictatorship: It can 
give orders to municipalities as if they were schoolchildren on probation.

But public opinion, across Canada and on both sides of the 49th parallel, 
had a lot to do with Friday's order.

British Columbia is preparing to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Penner was 
just back from Alberta, where he promised a development group called the 
Pacific Northwest Economic Region that Vancouver-Whistler will be the most 
environmentally sensitive games in the history of the Olympics.

Bluntly put, green games could not coexist with the brown reality of 
"Victoria's Secret" -- the daily discharge of 31 million gallons of 
untreated sewage into a waterway shared by the U.S., Canada, salmon runs and 
endangered marine mammals.

The province's touristy capital dumps a volume of effluent into the strait 
that would fill 40,000 Olympic-size swimming pools each year.



Still, the Capital Regional District waged a stubborn defensive action that 
lasted decades and outlasted premiers and governors.

It staged a 1992 referendum, in which "options" presented to voters 
maximized the cost of waste treatment while minimizing any environmental 
benefits. Still, 42 percent of voters opted for some form of treatment.

Victoria-area municipalities ignored an informal 1993 accord in which B.C. 
Premier Mike Harcourt and Washington Gov. Mike Lowry agreed that sewage 
treatment would be in place by 2008.

One year, Puget Sound environmental activists tried a boycott of the annual 
Swiftsure International Yacht Race. The Royal Victoria Yacht Club responded 
with a haughty statement that the protesters' alternative competition in the 
Sound lacked "any official sponsorship."

The Canadian federal and provincial governments acted, for the most part, as 
Victoria's enablers.

As the area closed to shell fishing in the strait kept expanding, the feds 
could find no violation of Canada's Fisheries Act.

David Anderson, Victoria's longtime member of Parliament, served as both 
environment and fisheries minister in the national government. Anderson was 
a steadfast defender of the status quo.

Similarly, the B.C. government quashed a lawsuit by the Sierra Legal Defense 
Fund that cited violations of how municipal governments are supposed to 
treat their wastes.

But the dumping policy gradually became unplugged.

Studies by Sierra Legal Defense indicated that such recalcitrant eastern 
Canadian cities as Halifax and St. John's were at last moving toward sewage 
treatment.

Victoria was the major holdout. Maclean's, Canada's national magazine, named 
the city known for its bicycle paths and recycling programs as the nation's 
worst sewage polluter.

In January's national election, Anderson was replaced as Victoria's MP by 
Denise Savoie of the New Democratic Party, who backs waste treatment.

As British Columbia's governing party in the 1990s, the New Democrats 
established a provincial park and popular marine trail along the Strait of 
Juan de Fuca.

Finally, the Capital Regional District commissioned a research panel of 
independent scientists to look at environmental and health impacts of 
Victoria's Secret.

The report by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry argued 
that dumping of raw sewage must end. Victoria and its neighboring 
communities are rapidly growing, along with volumes of human and industrial 
waste.

The provincial government broke its silence on Friday afternoon -- in a big 
way.

"It's safe to say the scientific scales are tilted in favor of secondary 
treatment," said Penner, referring to the cleansing and separating of 
effluent done by cities on the U.S. side of the strait.

Penner was not yet ready to say how much his government will help out with 
the estimated $350 million cost of a major treatment plant.

"Traditionally the province contributes, but there's no legal requirement," 
he said. "It's more a political decision."

In his order Friday, Penner told Victoria to think outside the bathroom. He 
"encouraged" the Capital Regional District to consider new technologies and 
possible private sector involvement in waste treatment.

"This is an excellent instruction: Victoria could conceivably go from having 
the worst waste treatment in Canada to having the best," said Christianne 
Wilhelmson of the Georgia Strait Alliance.

P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or 
joelconnelly at seattlepi.com.