Commentary by Bev Highton, board member with Grumpy Taxpayer$
The Association for Responsible and Environmentally Sustainable Sewage Treatment (ARREST) formed in 2012 might be saying “we told you so.”
An emotional and not very scientific protest, fronted by such scientific luminaries as Mr. Floatie, forced the CRD to spend over $750 million dollars on a sewage system.This system relied on concentrating sewage into a toxic sludge and delivering it to the Hartland Road Landfill by way of a pipeline.
The alternative would have been to upgrade Victoria’s existing system which relied on screening and dilution by releasing the harmless effluent into the vast, deep, cold and turbulent waters off Victoria.
This principle of dilution is demonstrated by the fact that ingesting a teaspoon full of cyanide will kill you. But throwing it in a swimming pool will have no effect on the swimmers as it is diluted into parts per billion.
Over the next few years, the CRD spent millions of dollars on consultants, designs and investigations into sewage treatment options. In 2017 the project moved into the construction phase with the main plant being situated on Macaulay Point located at the entrance to Victoria’s Inner Harbour.
The promise by the proponents of the project was to create a fully integrated sewage treatment facility. Basically it envisioned a system that would take sewage from the toilet to a final stage that would produce a marketable product that could generate electricity, be sold for fertilizer or for some other viable commercial use.
What we have now is a partially complete system producing what has been called a ‘toxic, concentrated biosolid’ which nobody wants.
Surely there are dozens of other cities dealing with these same issues?
Isn’t there at least one that we can adopt or is our system so unique that we are now facing additional costs to resolve a problem that should have been dealt with at the start?
MORE READING
Stop spreading biosolids at Hartland, and tell us about the risks, Times Colonist Commentary by Dave Cowen, Jan. 30, 2024.
Victoria’s Sewage Treatment – A Shakespearean Tragedy, Commentary by Dr. Shaun Peck, former CRD medical officer, updated to March 2024.
Flush with sewage success, Victoria icon Mr. Floatie retires, CBC News, May 17, 2017.
Wastewater Treatment Project, CRD, 2024.