- CRD SEWAGE COMMITTEE MEETS 13 MARCH - TITUS PROPOSAL ON AGENDA
- MCLOUGHLIN POINT REZONING DOCS NOW POSTED
- INTEGRITY BC- PARTNERSHIPS BC - CRD SEWAGE ENERGY CENTRE
CRD-RELATED SEWAGE & RELATED NEWS:
- LOCAL DESIGN FIRM DREAMS BIG FOR WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT (TITUS)
- NEW: MCLOUGHLIN POINT SEWAGE PLANT PROJECT PROPOSAL BY TITUS INFRASTRUCTURE
LETTERS:
- STUMBLES ON THE PATH FORWARD: CRD'S BLACKWELL REPLY AND DERMAN RESPONSE
- STUMBLES ON THE PATH FORWARD: CRD'S BLACKWELL REPLY AND DERMAN RESPONSE
- SEND IN YOUR LETTERS!
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ARESST ACTION:
ARESST: If you have a public comment to make (like on the Titus proposal!!), sign up before Monday 4:30pm to say something at the CALWMC meeting: http://www.crd.bc.ca/
CRD SEWAGE COMMITTEE MEETS 13 MARCH - TITUS PROPOSAL ON AGENDA
Meets Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at 9:30am.
Board Room, 6th floor, 625 Fisgard Street
AGENDA AND REPORTS FOR MEETING:
5. Correspondence:
a. Mayor of Esquimalt, March 4, 2013 re: Titus Infrastructure Service Limited Proposal
b. Mayor of Colwood, March 5, 2013 re: Sewage Treatment
6. Core Area Liquid Waste Management Plan Programs – 2011 Consolidated Annual Report
7. Design Guidelines for McLoughlin Wastewater Treatment Plant (CAL 13-11)
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ARESSTers: To contact Esquimalt Mayor & Council, go to Contacts page & click on their names to
open a form email to send: http://www.esquimalt.ca/
CRD'S MCLOUGHLIN POINT REZONING DOCS NOW POSTED
CRD has now posted three key site re-zoning documents to its sewage plan homepage
There is a lot of information in those three big documents. However, Rendering of some of roof of the proposed sewage plant in the Site and Floor Plan doc (digital pages 126-128) does not appear to correspond to the indicative renderings presented in Appendices (digital pages 15-22). Not only for Shoal Point condos, but also for passenger viewing from the very tall cruise ships at Ogden Point, and as safety factor, for floatplanes landing approach frequently right over the site, a roof plan
Click on link below to download the rezoning documents:
- Rezoning Application (PDF
) - Appendices (7MB PDF )
- Site & Floor Plans (7MB PDF )
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INTEGRITY BC- PARTNERSHIPS BC - CRD SEWAGE ENERGY CENTRE
Richard Atwell,
ARESST AND STOPABADPLAN.CA
Integrity BC just put out a news release on the expenses of the CEO of Partnerships BC:
http://www.integritybc.ca/?The CRD awarded Parternships BC (a crown corporation) a $711,300 contract late last year to help manage the sewage procurement process:
http://www.crd.bc.ca/minutes/
"MOVED by Director Brownoff, SECONDED by Director Sanders, That the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee recommend to the Capital Regional District Board: That Partnerships BC be awarded the contract for Phase I procurement services for the McLoughlin Point wastewater treatment facility in the amount of $711,300 plus HST."
http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/
Did the CRD put out a call for any other bidders? Of course not.
Only the biosolids facility at Hartland was supposed to be a P3 component (Phase 2 procurement) but the CRD has already involved Partnerships BC in the McLoughlin facility as you can see.
Time traveling back to the 2008, the Greater Victoria Waterwatch Coalition and CUPE were actively fighting P3's from the beginning. They are still around but have been unable to budge Judy Brownoff or the other NDP Directors at the CRD largely because they have no choice but to support them:
Mayor Dean "Team" Fortin
Judy "Science is for scientists" Brownoff
Marianne "Vice President of the Provincial NDP" Alto
Ben "I'm against P3's but support P3 sewage projects" Isitt
Vicki "Don't be a Chicken, Vote" Sanders (That's her shtick, not mine)
Back during the 2008 Municipal Election, Kim Manton created the "Keep it Public" campaign. The campaign was funded by CUPE Local 1978 which represents CRD employees, coincidentally enough.
Manton's group spent $275 on "Public Sewage" newspaper ads, $955 on "Let's Not Flush Money" postcards and a whopping $5,758 on "Vote for public sewage treatment" newspapers ads.
We'll see if anything changes after May when the NDP, as polls predict, form the provincial government and possibly restructure the commission and/or recast aspects of this $1 billion dollar boondoggle project to favor NDP backers.
However, I suspect the P3 love fest with privatization of essential services will continue under the NDP. Why?
Because the companies on the list below are getting the boot in countries all over the world that are converting their water systems back from private to public because it's a been a complete rip off for the taxpayer. So, where will these companies go for their profits?
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CRD-RELATED SEWAGE & RELATED NEWS:
Daniel Palmer
Victoria News
March 07, 2013
The future site of the Capital Regional District's wastewater treatment facility has the potential to become a world-class environmental and sustainable energy destination, says the president of a local design firm.
Erik Lindquist, president of Titus Infrastructure Services, put forward a proposal to Esquimalt council at a closed meeting Monday that calls for a 650,000 sq. ft. mixed-use facility at Mcloughlin Point.
The proposal envisions a 100,000 sq. ft. sewage treatment and resource recovery plant in addition to commercial and residential space, and sits in stark contrast to CRD plans for a single-use wastewater treatement facility and marine outfall.
"It's the most expensive piece of property on the south Island, and the CRD wants to turn it into a disposal site," said Lindquist, whose company specializes in heat and resource recovery.
Mayor Barb Desjardins forwarded the proposal to the CRD board and core area liquid waste management committee for consideration at their March 13 meetings.
"We can't officially endorse or reject this proposal, but we're really interested in some of the concepts and ideas, and we want to encourage CRD to really look at this sort of a project going forward," she said.
The new proposal would effectively negate current CRD plans to build centralized wastewater and biosolids recovery plants at Mcloughlin Point and Hartland landfill in Saanich.
It would also mean smaller tertiary treatment facilities would be needed throughout Greater Victoria, which could prove a hard sell to CRD directors.
"This is going back to where we were in the process before we turned around and made the wrong turn ... we were looking at a number of sites to deal with waste and resource management in one facility," Desjardins said.
View Desjardins' letter to the CRD and Lindquist's proposal below.
dpalmer@vicnews.com
http://www.vicnews.com/news/
The future site of the Capital Regional District's wastewater treatment facility has the potential to become a world-class environmental and sustainable energy destination, says the president of a local design firm.
Erik Lindquist, president of Titus Infrastructure Services, put forward a proposal to Esquimalt council at a closed meeting Monday that calls for a 650,000 sq. ft. mixed-use facility at Mcloughlin Point.
The proposal envisions a 100,000 sq. ft. sewage treatment and resource recovery plant in addition to commercial and residential space, and sits in stark contrast to CRD plans for a single-use wastewater treatement facility and marine outfall.
"It's the most expensive piece of property on the south Island, and the CRD wants to turn it into a disposal site," said Lindquist, whose company specializes in heat and resource recovery.
Mayor Barb Desjardins forwarded the proposal to the CRD board and core area liquid waste management committee for consideration at their March 13 meetings.
"We can't officially endorse or reject this proposal, but we're really interested in some of the concepts and ideas, and we want to encourage CRD to really look at this sort of a project going forward," she said.
The new proposal would effectively negate current CRD plans to build centralized wastewater and biosolids recovery plants at Mcloughlin Point and Hartland landfill in Saanich.
It would also mean smaller tertiary treatment facilities would be needed throughout Greater Victoria, which could prove a hard sell to CRD directors.
"This is going back to where we were in the process before we turned around and made the wrong turn ... we were looking at a number of sites to deal with waste and resource management in one facility," Desjardins said.
View Desjardins' letter to the CRD and Lindquist's proposal below.
dpalmer@vicnews.com
http://www.vicnews.com/news/
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NEW: MCLOUGHLIN POINT SEWAGE PLANT PROJECT PROPOSAL BY TITUS INFRASTRUCTURE
From the project planning folks at Titus Infrastructure:
Esquimalt’s new Coastal Destination Community Centre will be a meeting place, celebrating local cultures, our common maritime history and community, with a mix of local markets, commercial and residential units.
The Coastal Destination Community is planned to be the home to some of the most advanced integrated energy and resource recovery companies in the world, where the companies are both promoting and part of sustainability on a large scale.
A key driver behind this project is demonstrating how the development of an integrated energy and water reclamation project can be done on a cash flow basis, minimizing the tax burden on the region’s population, and harnessing an environmental business cluster to commercialize these technologies globally.
READ MORE:
http://titusinfrastructure.
DOWNLOAD 5-PAGE BRIEF:
http://titusinfrastructure.
The Coastal Destination Community is planned to be the home to some of the most advanced integrated energy and resource recovery companies in the world, where the companies are both promoting and part of sustainability on a large scale.
A key driver behind this project is demonstrating how the development of an integrated energy and water reclamation project can be done on a cash flow basis, minimizing the tax burden on the region’s population, and harnessing an environmental business cluster to commercialize these technologies globally.
READ MORE:
http://titusinfrastructure.
DOWNLOAD 5-PAGE BRIEF:
http://titusinfrastructure.
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LETTERS:
STUMBLES ON PATH FORWARD: CRD'S BLACKWELL REPLY & DERMAN RESPONSE
Focus Magazine
March 2013
The article by David Broadland (January 2013) tries to support the view that the planning process for the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Program was narrow, discounted alternative approaches and technologies, and was therefore flawed. An objective evaluation of the facts clearly does not support such a proposition.
Fact: Since the initial planning report The Path Forward was published in June 2007, significant changes have taken place to the program configuration such that it is no longer pertinent.
Fact: Multiple options for the liquids treatment were considered, from a single treatment plant to multiple plants throughout the service area. The cost estimate for the multiple plant option increased with the number of plants.
Fact: The final technology for the liquids treatment facility has not been chosen. A representative technology has been selected for budgeting purposes and to show that construction of the treatment facility at McLoughlin Point is feasible.
Fact: Multiple options for processing biosolids were considered and evaluated. These included sludge digestion with beneficial re-use of residual biosolids, and [converting] waste to energy using raw sludge as well as digested sludge (biosolids).
Fact: The accuracy of the cost estimate is based on preliminary level design. The final cost will depend on a number of factors such as market conditions, change in the cost of materials and labour, as well as interest rates.
The CRD wastewater treatment program has generated international interest so the CRD can anticipate the best possible outcomes from the best minds in the industry. The citizens of the region can rest assured that the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee has considered all feasible alternatives brought forward and has created a process that will encourage the private sector bidders to propose the most innovative solutions available to address the region’s sewage treatment needs.
Denise Blackwell, Chair,
Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee
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Focus invited CRD Director Vic Derman to respond to Denise Blackwell. Derman has been a member of the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee since its inception in 2006:
Denise Blackwell puts forward a number of points as “facts.” With all respect, I disagree with Chair Blackwell about the accuracy of these “facts.”
Significant changes have been made to the original The Path Forward document; however, the core concept it presented of building a large central plant at the end of the current collection system remains the same.
A comparison of The Path Forward with decentralized systems with more satellite plants was carried out. However, Option 1, basically The Path Forward, was selected even though it was almost 6 times less effective than Option 2 in greenhouse gas reduction. Furthermore, the report concluded Option 1 was not particularly viable for heat recovery since major infrastructure was located too far from potential users. Options 2 and 3, on the other hand, were seen to be quite viable. Finally, none of these options were designed from the ground up around resource recovery and none were designed to take advantage of development anticipated in the Regional Growth Study.
Final technology for the liquids treatment plant may not have been chosen, but a very aggressive time frame for the procurement phase, to be managed by an appointed commission, suggests that major changes in the current proposal are unlikely.
As for the biosolids, I brought a proposal to the committee with the potential to save as much as $200 million in capital costs, save $3-$4 million in annual operating costs and allow utilization of much smaller sites than currently required. The response was a suggestion that this could be considered at the procurement stage. That, of course, is when the project is in the hands of an appointed commission with elected politicians having only limited control. Hopefully, the commission will fully investigate such possibilities, but what if they don’t? Surely, the committee should not have left the opportunity for such dramatic savings up to an appointed commission operating on a very tight timeline.
Blackwell is correct that final costs have not been definitely established. However, that is hardly comforting. Current estimates are based on continued low interest rates over a 25-year payback period. There is no guarantee that this will happen. Also, there is the possibility of cost overruns, a problem that has afflicted virtually every major government project built recently in British Columbia. If overruns do take place, they will be entirely covered by local taxpayers since federal and provincial governments have capped their contributions. This could increase local taxes dramatically.
In the end, I hope things will work out for the best. I most certainly, however, can’t see any reason to “rest assured.”
Vic Derman,
CRD Director and member of the Core Area Liquid Waste Committee
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