Sludge Watch ==> Victoria BC - should we spend money to build sewage treatment plants?

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch admin:

Interesting to note that conventional North American sewage treatment plants 
function so badly that you can have a debate about whether a coastal 
community should bother to spend the money to build one.

Many big cities (like Toronto Canada) have so many spills and so much sewage 
goes straight to the lake from sewer overflow and bypass that much of 
Toronto's sewage evades any treatment at all.

And really  - if toxins are raked out of the sewers only to be spread back 
into the environment on famland as sewage sludge biosolids - then many of 
these toxins will just end up in the groundwater and surface waters 
eventually anyway.

What is clear is that we are using 19thCentury technology to treat 21st 
Century sewage wastes. Our wastewater and sewer systems have not advanced 
technology to keep up with the times.
We ourselves - human beings - have created a world where we mix our fecal 
waste with industrial waste, blend it with precious potable water and create 
the number one source of pollution in North America.  Other industries have 
been driven clean while urban sewer wastes have been given a pass .  We are 
only starting to recognize the price we pay for this negligence - in 
collapsed fish stock, antibiotic resistant disease proliferation, and 
undrinkable, unswimable, unfishable waters.

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

Victoria British Columbia

UVic forum delves into murky - and controversial - world of sewage
Rob Shaw, Times Colonist
Friday, February 22, 2008


More than 100 people delved deep into the murky scientific, social and 
political waters of sewage treatment at a free University of Victoria forum 
Thursday night, hearing presentations from two scientists, an engineer and a 
public policy expert.

"We're asking the question here as to how we got to where we are, and what 
the CRD [Capital Regional District] is planning from here," said James 
Boutilier, president of the non-profit Maritime Awards Society of Canada, 
which organized the event.

There were, however, no easy answers. And, despite a vigorous question and 
answer session, no one presented a way around a provincial order to build 
treatment plants and impending federal legislation that will make treating 
sewage mandatory for Canadian cities after 2010.


Treating sewage to a secondary standard - which speeds up the biological 
breakdown of the waste - will remove nutrients from the water that can 
sometimes cause rapid and destructive algae growth, said Sophia Johannessen, 
a research scientist who specializes in ocean contaminants at the Department 
of Fisheries and Oceans' Institute of Ocean Sciences. However, nutrient 
accumulation is not a problem off Southern Vancouver Island because of the 
quick-moving ocean waters, she said.

Treating sewage could also cut down harmful pathogens and pharmaceuticals - 
such as antibiotics and birth control pills found in human waste - which 
have the potential to alter the biological chemistry of marine life, she 
said.

But it won't break down the metals, such as copper, lead and zinc. Nor will 
it break down PCBs, such as flame retardants, which find their way into the 
waste stream from products we own and consume, said Johannessen. Those 
toxins will end up in the sludge that becomes the byproduct of the treatment 
process, and which must then be buried in a landfill or incinerated, she 
said.

"Secondary treatment does not destroy any of these persistent organic 
pollutants or metals," she said. "We have them in our houses, we're putting 
them down the drain. Stopping putting them down the drain is stopping them 
from going into the environment."

The provincial government ordered the CRD in 2006 to start planning 
secondary treatment for Greater Victoria's waste. Building up to six 
treatment plants for the region is expected to cost around $1.2 billion and 
lead to a significant tax hike.

About 129 million litres a day of sewage water are currently screened for 
solid objects and discharged out of underwater ocean outfall pipes off 
Clover Point in Victoria and Macaulay Point in Esquimalt.

The environmental harm around the outfalls has been a source of numerous 
studies and reports, the most notable of which was the 2006 MacDonald report 
that found pollution in the sediment near the outfall exceeded B.C.'s 
contaminated site benchmarks. The report set off a firestorm of political 
activity and pushed B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner to order 
treatment.

Like almost every other sewage report, it continued to be analyzed and 
reinterpreted by advocates for and against treatment at Thursday's forum.

Monitoring the health of sea life such as mussels and worms around the 
outfalls has shown there is some ecological impact, but it may not translate 
into major harm to the ecosystem, said Peter Chapman, senior environmental 
scientist with Golder Associates in Vancouver.

"I'd be more worried close to the shore, frankly, because that's where you 
have stormwater runoff," said Chapman.

The region's stormwater system, which captures water runoff from homes and 
streets when it rains, often mixes with the sewage system due to decaying 
old pipes. During heavy rain, this sewage and rain mixture overflows onto 
beaches and creeks as the pipes become overwhelmed. The CRD has registered 
an increasing number of public health and environmental warnings from 
overflows.

Fixing the region's old decaying pipes should be a higher priority than 
building treatment plants, Keith Martin, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca MP, told the 
crowd while summarizing a series of public forums he's held on the sewage 
treatment issue.

"All of us want to make sure we are putting the money where it should be," 
he said.

Rod Dobell, a professor emeritus at UVic's Centre for Global Studies, 
recapped the various provincial, federal and international laws surrounding 
ocean pollution. But he said it is the interpretation of those regulations 
at a local level, and a "never-ending dialogue" of public debate around the 
issue, that make sewage treatment such an interesting topic of policy 
analysis.

"The one thing we can be sure of is that these very simple questions we pose 
about the simple mundane task of managing municipal waste water have no 
simple answers," he said.

The sewage forum continues at UVic on Friday, with a workshop from those in 
favour, and opposed, to treatment plants. The session begins at 8:30 a.m. at 
UVic's Engineering and Computer Science Building, ECS123. Registration costs 
$45.

Organizers of the forum say they plan to post a recap of the presentations 
at www.maritimeawards.ca.

rfshaw at tc.canwest.com