![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/001.jpg\")
<\/a>In 2012 the CRD established Seaterra, a non-political governance body, to deal with the problem. Seaterra received funding commitments from Ottawa and the provincial government to build a large land-based treatment facility. Eventually they settled on McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt as the location for the treatment plant. But in 2014 the municipality of Esquimalt, a long-time opponent of the idea, scuttled the plan once and for all by refusing the rezoning needed to build the plant.<\/p>\n
With the McLoughlin Point plan dead in the water, the CRD has split the task up between the \u201cEastside\u201d municipalities (Oak Bay, Saanich, and Victoria) and the \u201cWestside\u201d municipalities (Langford, Colwood, Esquimalt, View Royal, and the Songhees Nation). Each group will come up with an independent solution to deal with sewage.<\/p>\n
The issue remains divisive. A number of groups claim the current system of deep-sea outflows work fine to disperse waste and that there is no need to spend more money. The CRD continues to fund Seaterra and its consultants (Seaterra\u2019s average monthly costs are $114,000). Civil engineers, biologists, and economists debate secondary versus tertiary treatment, distributed versus centralized plants, and energy recovery versus solid waste fertilizer. With so much money on the line, tensions are high.<\/p>\n
And every day, Victoria pumps another 82 million litres of sewage into the ocean.<\/p>\n
The distributed-tertiary-treatment perspective<\/b><\/p>\n
Tom Maler, who advocates for sewage treatment with the RITE Plan campaign, believes that the most efficient method would be a number of small plants distributed throughout the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmaller plants can deal with the sewage in the different neighbourhoods where it\u2019s created,\u201d he says. \u201cThis requires less infrastructure, because it would basically join on to the existing network of the sewage mains.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tertiary treatment involves separating the solids and the sludge from the sewage and filtering the effluent through 0.04-micron filters. The water is then disinfected with a combination of UV and hydrogen peroxide, destroying 99 percent of bacteria and most of the harmful chemicals found in sewage.<\/p>\n
The leftover sludge would be dehydrated and gasified. This produces a thin gas that could be burned to generate electricity. Only clean water and an inert slag is left at the end of the process. Some of the slag is in the form of charcoal, which could be used in the tertiary filtering process, closing the loop on some of the treatment process.<\/p>\n
There is some opposition to the idea of neighbourhood sewage plants, but Maler believes the technology exists to treat sewage in a low-impact way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the big picture these small plants will be more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
And he thinks the public is beginning to agree. But there are still obstacles to getting the planning committees to approve this method. The biggest obstacle, says Maler, is making a final decision on the \u201chow\u201d before more time is wasted on the \u201cwhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a lot more important to talk about the principles first,\u201d he says, \u201cand then decide on sites that could accommodate those technical principles. I think this discussing sites before we have decided on technology is putting the cart before the horse. If you decide on the technology, it right away eliminates a whole bunch of sites.\u201d<\/p>\n
The no-need perspective<\/b><\/p>\n
Shaun Peck, who was a public health consultant and medical health officer for the CRD from 1989 to 1995, is a vocal opponent of the plan to build any land-based sewage treatment facility. In Peck\u2019s opinion, the decision to build a sewage treatment plant is not motivated by science.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince about 1992 I\u2019ve supported what the marine scientists have said, which is that the current deep-sea outflows do an amazing job in dealing with sewage effluent. We\u2019ve got two outflows 1.2 and 1 kilometre out into the ocean. They\u2019re 60 metres below the surface of the sea, there\u2019s a 200-metre diffuser at the end of them, and you can\u2019t detect the plume after about 400 metres.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peck admits there is an impact on the marine environment, but contends that the impact is minimal. \u201cBased on a dozen marine scientists and six public health officials, there\u2019s no evidence that the current practice is having any measurable health effect,\u201d he says. \u201cThe effect on the marine environment is minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peck calls it \u201ctragic\u201d that so much public money has been spent with nothing to show for it, and he wants the project stopped. Victoria could challenge federal regulations, which other provinces have done, and ask the province for a special permit based on the \u201cunique receiving environment\u201d into which our sewage flows, he says.<\/p>\n
The problem, as he sees it, is political.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s talk about need and want,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause there\u2019s a lot of difference between the two. It\u2019s not needed. But whether it\u2019s wanted or not is up to the public to decide. What I stand for is the best available scientific data and the best public health opinion. If the politicians decide they want to do it, okay. As far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s been a political decision from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday, May 12, a formal debate on the subject of sewage was held at Camosun\u2019s Lansdowne campus. But it\u2019s nothing new: Victoria\u2019s sewage controversy has been stewing for nearly two decades. The last few years have seen things intensify, with plans, counter-plans, and failed proposals stacking up at the Capital Regional District (CRD) to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-june-10-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10683,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681\/revisions\/10683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}