Sludge Watch ==> Victoria BC - Need to look at latest technologies to treat sewage, sludge

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Victoria British Columbia (the Capital Regional District CRD), doesn't have 
sewage treatment.  They send untreated sewage into the Straits of Juan de 
Fuca ... and have a huge dead zone around the sewer outfall.  Now they have 
been ordered to put in sewage treatment.

But what treatment?  Public or private or public/private?  And shouldn't 
they look at the latest technologies that undertake better ways to address 
sanitation needs?  The old ways of managing sewage do not work well, and are 
very expensive.  Since there isn't a big infrastructure in place, now is the 
time to do innovative work on Victoria's sewage managment...not just the 
19th Century technologies that are generally in place in North America.

......................


Dec 12, 2007
Monday Magazine British Columbia


Sewage pipe dreams?

Now that sewage treatment has been mandated by the provincial government, 
one question that remains is whether or not this project—pegged at $1.2 
billion, one-third of which the CRD would be responsible for—should proceed 
by way of a public-private partnership.

“The province has been pushing for public-private partnership for some time 
now,” says Saanich councillor and CRD Core Area Liquid Waste Management 
Committee member Vic Derman. “When you’re talking about a situation that 
could involve huge amounts of public money, then the public has a right to 
participate. With public-private partnerships, the one thing that concerns 
me more than anything is the fact that very often, for reasons given of 
confidentiality and proprietary information, the public isn’t made aware of 
the nature of the contract that is signed.”

Provincial legislation used to require electoral approval before a 
municipality could borrow over $5 million, or enter into a debt contract 
that would extend over five years, to finance wastewater treatment systems. 
But an April 19, 2007, Order in Council changed all that. The order, signed 
by Ida Chong, Liberal MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and minister of community 
services, removed liquid waste management plans from requiring electoral 
approval before they can proceed. One might speculate whether the order is 
related to the June 2006 rejection by Whistler residents of a private-public 
partnership to rebuild their aging wastewater treatment system.

But CRD chair Denise Blackwell says she thinks the order was intended to 
prevent residents from rejecting sewage treatment altogether. “I think any 
time you ask the electorate to spend $1.2 billion, they are going to reject 
it,” she says. “I don’t think it matters whether it’s a public-private 
partnership or whether it’s a straight expenditure.”

At this point, the decision about whether or not the CRD should pursue a 
public-private partnership has not been made—at least to his knowledge, says 
Derman. “It better not have been made. And we better make darn sure when 
you’ve got that kind of public expenditure, and environmental consequences, 
that you’ve got the best options sorted out.”

“Big pipe” outdated

Emerging technologies that can generate electricity from what is tactfully 
termed biosolids should be seriously considered for the design of CRD’s 
sewer project, says two Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee members. 
But the push thus far has been to build upon outdated and ancient “big pipe” 
technology, they say.

“Up to this point, the minister has dictated, ‘Go do this,’ but that should 
not be an excuse to do the thing that makes most sense,” says committee 
member and View Royal mayor Graham Hill. The tight deadline imposed by the 
province, which required the CRD put forward a sewage treatment plan by June 
2007, prevented engineers from exploring all available design options, he 
says. That CRD plan, although it calls for five decentralized plants, still 
involves collecting sludge from the proposed Clover Point outfall and 
trucking it elsewhere. But emerging technologies would treat that sludge 
upstream in a “resource recovery” mode similar to that of the Dockside Green 
development.

“My concern is we haven’t done the investigation yet into that broader 
resource-based system,” says fellow committee member Vic Derman. “We’re too 
tied to where we have been. There’s technology that’s coming out now that 
takes all the biosolids and essentially turns them all to a biogas and 
energy, and gets about a three or four to one return. So for the amount of 
energy you use for the process, you get three to four times as much back 
out,” says Derman, adding this is something that climate change forces us to 
consider very carefully.

Victoria, because it hasn’t yet instituted any secondary sewer treatment, 
has a unique opportunity to implement cutting edge water and energy recovery 
systems, but there’s a risk we might lose this chance if we don’t carefully 
consider our options, says Derman.

“If we go in the direction we indicated in June, and if we do it in a fairly 
short time-line, then we might lose out on that opportunity to put in what 
essentially is a 21st century system, rather than older technology and older 
approaches.”

http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=117&cat=23&id=1121528&more=0