CRD-RELATED SEWAGE NEWS:
- CALWMC MEETS 8 AUGUST, 9:30AM: AGENDA & REPORT LINKS
- ATTACHED IMAGE OF SAANICH NEWS ALL LETTERS ANTI-LAND-BASED SEWAGE PLANT
- LETTER: LEADERS' FIRM TREATMENT STANCE FLIES IN FACE OF SCIENCE (GREEN)
- LETTER: HALF-TRUTHS CLOUDING TREATMENT DISCUSSION (LI)
GENERAL SEWAGE-RELATED NEWS:
- THRIVING NATIVE OYSTERS SPAWN COSTLY DELAYS AT INFAMOUS CROSSING (Craigflower bridge replacement)
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ARESSTERs: You've signed our petition, so now do you have family, friends, fellow-facebookers
or bloggers who you can ask to sign too?
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ARESST: Implications report below includes "legal" implications, but CRD must do a complete legal review of the federal legislation and regulations. Also note that the CRD in the past has previously stated in writing that the outfalls DO meet provincial requirements. Also, in the Six-Month Plan report, there is absolutely no mention of any federal or provincial environmental impact assessment being even started during that time period!
CALWMC MEETS 8 AUGUST, 9:30AM: AGENDA & REPORT LINKS
REPORT: http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/
6. Six-Month Plan – Core Area Wastewater Treatment Program
REPORT:
http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/
7. Implications Of New Federal Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations
REPORT: http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/
Agendas, CALWMC: http://www.crd.bc.ca/
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ATTACHED IMAGE OF SAANICH NEWS ALL LETTERS ANTI-LAND-BASED SEWAGE PLANT
as Saanich News Wednesday, 1 August edition every letter published was anti-plant! Including the letters
below, and that published in last ARESST News Blog, you've seen the readable-version of those
letters.
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LETTER: LEADERS' FIRM TREATMENT STANCE FLIES IN FACE OF SCIENCE (GREEN)
Victoria News
July 31, 2012 6:32 PM
Re: Treatment foes go on offensive against project (News, July 25), and CRD’s position on treatment clarified (Letters, July 25)
So, why do we need a sewage plant? The scientists tell us that there is no need. Sewage biosolids are handily gobbled up by the vast and thoroughly oxygenated Salish Sea.
But what about the metals, the endocrine-mimicking drug, and other pollutants in the sewage that are affecting our marine mammals?
I am sorry to say that the federal and provincial rules aren’t expansive enough to require that, and so with the proposed system, we won’t bother spending on the proven technology of pollution source control.
There is no need for the proposed system. It will provide no new benefit and it will consume funds that would far more effectively improve our environment if spent elsewhere.
And speaking of money, let’s not forget that there is no cost-benefit study to reflect on. But I suppose if there is, in fact, no evidence to say that there is any benefit, why worry about costs?
The proposed sewage system has no demonstrated reason to be, won’t solve the real pollution problem and will cost every one of us a very real fortune. In the face of that, our so-called leaders Geoff Young and Denise Blackwell toady up with ‘Too late folks, federal and provincial rules are rules,’ and ‘compliance, compliance, compliance’ is the word of the day.
Nothing to see here. Move along please and no thinking, questioning, or stepping out of the line at the payment wicket.
Oh, and you whales over there, you can just move along, too.
Kent Green
Victoria
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LETTER: HALF-TRUTHS CLOUDING TREATMENT DISCUSSION (LI)
Saanich News
July 31, 2012
Denise Blackwell speaks the truth. The truth is that the CRD requires the installation of sewage treatment by legislation. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole truth.
The rest of the truth is that Victoria doesn’t need secondary sewage treatment. Study after study through the years has demonstrated this. Victoria is geographically unique.
We live on the shores of a huge volume of deep, fast flowing water. The marine environment deals with it better than any other means we could develop. The current system is the most environmentally effective way to deal with our effluent.
A land-based sewage treatment plant would be much more energy intensive and greenhouse gas emitting than the current system – with no environmental advantage.
So, this is yet another case of politics versus science. The politicians are not interested in the facts. They only want to meet the “one size fits all” legislative requirements which are flawed. We need this plan like we need another fleet of Fast Ferries. If this was taxpayer’s money well spent for the benefit of all, I would support the additional taxation.
If we don’t all stand up and say no to this huge waste, we’re going to be on the hook for the better part of a billion dollars. Not to mention the funds that will no longer be available for better purposes.
There is a plus side though: the bureaucrats will all feel better when they flush the toilet.
Lingxia Li
Saanich
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ARESST:
Gorge Waterway was identified by CRD in 2007 has having many health/environmental storm drain discharges of concern, however, excerpt from article below: “It’s hard to say whether the oysters do better in dirty or clean water ... Hopefully the oysters don’t disappear from the Gorge now that it’s clean.”
THRIVING NATIVE OYSTERS SPAWN COSTLY DELAYS AT INFAMOUS CROSSING (Craigflower bridge replacement)
CRAIG MCINNES
Vancouver Sun
August 3, 2012 4:01 PM
VICTORIA — The anglers who return every year for the herring run in the Gorge will be fishing off a familiar bridge again next spring.
The Craigflower Bridge crosses the shallow tidal saltwater stream a few kilometres up from the Victoria harbour. The low two-lane span achieved notoriety 15 years ago, when in a case that shocked the nation, teenagers who gathered for a drinking party under its western end savagely turned on 14-year-old Reena Virk, then followed her across to the beach on the other side where she was beaten and drowned.
The memorial that marked that disturbing episode is long gone and attention has turned again to the natural features that have drawn people to this narrows for thousands of years, long before cars took over cities and needed a way to cross. Anglers have fished off bridges here since the late 1800s. Middens on both sides attest to the use by first nations long before that.
The current version of the bridge is 78 years old. It was slated for replacement with a new fisherman-friendly bridge this summer but got a reprieve because the municipalities it connects, Saanich and View Royal, couldn’t get their ducks in a row in time to start construction in the brief window between the herring in the spring and the salmon in the fall.
They had the funding lined up — $10 million in gas tax from Ottawa – but environmental approvals were taking longer than expected.
The issue wasn’t ducks, but oysters, although it could have been any one of a number of wild creatures. The environmental assessment looked for birds nesting in trees on the approaches, fish and the creatures that live on the bridge itself and the bottom.
“You do the study and find out what’s out there that’s of concern,” says Jim Hemstock, manager of capital works for Saanich.
What they found was a bounty of oysters and not just any oysters, but the relatively rare native species, Olympia oysters, that have been over-fished and then elbowed aside on most of the coast by the larger Japanese variety that was imported for oyster farming and has since taken over.
The Gorge is one of the few places left on the coast where there is a relatively healthy population of the native species. A survey this year found they were particularly abundant between the wooden pilings of the old bridge.
Since European settlers arrived, the Gorge has undergone two transformations. The first was to introduce industrial pollutants and sewage that ended its role as the local recreation centre, where swimming and diving competitions were regularly held until the mid-1920s.
Then in the last couple of decades, it has been cleaned up again, through the efforts of local volunteers who fished out truckloads of junk that been thrown into the water over the years and through improvements in municipal sewage systems.
Next weekend the Gorge Waterway Initiative will hold its first Swimfest to re-introduce people to swimming in the Gorge.
Joachim Carolsfeld, with the Victoria-based World Fisheries Trust, led the oyster study and is helping design features of the new bridge to make it more oyster friendly.
Carolsfeld says while the cleaner water may play a role in the success of native oysters here, it may not be a positive one.
“It’s hard to say whether the oysters do better in dirty or clean water ... Hopefully the oysters don’t disappear from the Gorge now that it’s clean.”
Meanwhile, the bridge builders are being required to go to extreme lengths to protect them. When they were just drilling soil samples, they had to first clear the sea bed where the drill would go through.
“Even though it was a small number of oysters that would have been crushed by the drill bit, the law says you can’t harm them so we had a diver go down and relocate those few,” Hemstock says.
When it comes to the actual construction, all of the oysters in the way have to be moved. That’s not just a matter of scooping them up and tossing them in again somewhere else. They have to be picked up individually and then placed in a good spot the right way up.
“It’s a fairly bid deal,” says Hemstock. “You have a diver. A diver has to have a helper for safety. You have to have a tender, so you’ve got three guys there, all fairly well paid, moving oysters.”
The cost of relocating the oysters is as yet uncertain but significant. “I think it will be in the order of tens of thousands,” says Hemstock.“It’s going to take several days and these moves are not cheap.”
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