April 21, 2013


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CONTENTS OF THIS BLOG:

STOP A BAD PLAN! ACTION

UPCOMING ACTIONS: 

- BANNER WAVE CALENDAR & ARESST EVENTS CALENDAR
CRD MEETING: PLANNING, TRANSPORTATION & PROTECTIVE SERVICES COMMITTEE, 24 APRIL- START SENDING EMAILS TO ELECTION CANDIDATES!

ONGOING ACTIONS:

- SIGN PETITION!
- ARESST BANNERING EVENTS THIS WEEK
- DOWNLOAD OUR STOPABADPLAN FACTSHEET ON ESQUIMALT SLUDGE PLANT ISSUE

PAST ACTIONS

- VIDEO CLIP OF VIC WEST COMMUNITY ASSOC. SEWAGE SLUDGE PLANT FORUM (16 APRIL)

CRD SEWAGE NEWS

THINK SMALL ON SEWAGE PLANS, EXPERT TELLS FORUM
VIDEO CLIP: ELECTION CANDIDATES WADE INTO SEWAGE DEBATE
VIDEO CLIP: SEWAGE PUBLIC FORUM KEEPS COMMUNITY TALKING
IAIN HUNTER: IN THE SLUDGE OF DESPOND OVER SEWAGE

LETTERS

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAY STOP SEWAGE PLAN (Ferguson)

BC; OTTAWA SHOULD  FIND SEWAGE-PLANT SITE (Rawlinson)

 - SEND IN YOUR LETTERS!

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STOP A BAD PLAN! ACTION:

UPCOMING ACTIONS: 

BANNER WAVE CALENDAR

Watch the Banner Wave Calendar for our posting this week's banner wave locations, times soon

Community Events Calendar:

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Stop A Bad Plan folks:

Go to meeting to ask that PTPSC provide input to Esquimalt's McLoughlin Pt rezoning process just WHY a CRD sewage plant should be plunked into Esquimalt, and how Esquimalt folks will BENEFIT from this loss of their most-valuable Victoria Harbour land AND why a sewage plant in Esquimalt now makes a secretly-planned sludge plant in Esquimalt so darned good for Esquimalt.

Fill out online form and submit by Monday, 4:30pm:
http://www.crd.bc.ca/about/board/addressing.htm


CRD MEETING: PLANNING, TRANSPORTATION & PROTECTIVE SERVICES COMMITTEE, 24 APRIL

April 24, 2013, 1:30pm.
Boardroom, 6th Floor,
625 Fisgard Street

7. Capital Regional District Amendment to Township of Esquimalt Official Community Plan and Zoning Bylaw – Core Area Wastewater Treatment Plant and Regional Growth Strategy Consistency.

http://www.crd.bc.ca/agendas/planningtransportati_/2013_/20130424agendaptpsc/20130424agendaptpsc.pdf

Here is the CRD report to read before the meeting: http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/planningtransportati_/2013_/04april24_/ppsjdf20130410esquim/ppsjdf20130410esquim.pdf

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START SENDING EMAILS TO ELECTION CANDIDATES!

Dear STOPABADPLANer:

It’s election time in BC, when each of us can help choose leaders who will stand up for what we care about.

This election, many of us are worried about the bad CRD sewage plan, with its completely inadequate research, lack of independent environmental impact assessment or health impact assessments To safeguard both our neighbourhoods and our environment, we  need to say ‘no’ to the bad CRD sewage plan and ‘yes’ to a sustainable wastewater future.
Please take a moment to find out where the main parties currently stand on the CRD sewage plan, the McLoughlin sewage plant and the Viewfield sewage sludge plant and how you can use your vote to help protect our environment. 

If you share our concerns about this bad CRD sewage plantake action now by getting in touch with the candidates in your riding and asking them to go on record  with their own views about the CRD sewage plan, and what they would do about the lack of environmental impact assessment, health impact assessment, poor siting and no idea where the final destination of the digested sewage sludge will really be if they got elected. This will help us hold candidates to account if they win - and if enough of us make our voices heard, we can press parties to take a stronger stance against the CRD's bad sewage plan in the run up to the election on May 14th.

Take action!

1. Email your candidates using this handy website. Just fill in your contact details and your message will be sent to all the candidates in your riding. We’ve prepared a sample letter below to get you started. 

2.. Go further. Ask questions at an all-candidates meeting in your riding, or phone your candidates and request a face-to-face meeting. 
The upcoming election is a significant opportunity to translate the recent groundswell of public opposition to this bad CRD sewage plan into concrete action to put a stop to its bad plants. Together, we can help shape the important public conversation about CRD's sustainable future that will be had in the coming month, and give our next government a strong mandate to protect CRD's marine, land and social environment now and for the future.
    

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ONGOING ACTIONS:

SIGN PETITION!

Go to our stopabadplan website, download petition and take around your neighbourhood:

http://stopabadplan.ca/

BANNERING EVENTS THIS WEEK

Will be continuing weekly street bannering by ARESST members in various parts of the region. Our focus is now on Esquimalt and Vic West neighbourhoods.

Bring $20 to get your ARESST yellow tshirt!

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PAST ACTIONS

VIDEO CLIP: VIC WEST COMMUNITY ASSOC. SEWAGE SLUDGE PLANT FORUM (16 APRIL)

Great short video clip of VWCA sewage sludge plant meeting, with important statements from presenters: 



Diane Carr, president of Vic West Community Association, introducing panel to audience of 100+ concerned citizens. 

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DOWNLOAD OUR STOPABADPLAN FACTSHEET ON ESQUIMALT SLUDGE PLANT ISSUE

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CRD SEWAGE NEWS

THINK SMALL ON SEWAGE PLANS, EXPERT TELLS FORUM


SANDRA MCCULLOCH 
TIMES COLONIST
APRIL 17, 2013

Opponents of a plan to put a sewage treatment plant and biosolids facility in Esquimalt got the backing of the co-author of a report advocating small treatment plants scattered around the region rather than one large one.

The Capital Regional District failed to act on a suggestion it spend $20,000 to draw up a business case to understand the economics of sewage treatment, Chris Corps told a standing-room-only crowd at a public forum Tuesday night.

“Right now, my math tells me they spent $50 million but they don’t have a $20,000 business case,” said Corps, who co-wrote a 2007 report commissioned by the province to examine integrated resource management, which uses small scattered treatment plants to sell heat, water and fuel from sewage.

Under a CRD proposal, sludge would be piped two kilometres from the planned sewage treatment plant on McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt to a biosolids facility on Viewfield Road, which is in an industrial zone across the street from family homes, next door to a grocery store and blocks from two schools.

Corps said the Dockside Green development, located along the water in Vic West, offers an example of how sewage can be treated on site without disturbing residents or neighbours.

“Dockside Green is a very good example of how to get it right,” Corps said, noting that a picturesque waterway at the site is actually part of the sewage system.

A single sewage system tasked to handle the region’s waste would have a much greater impact on the neighbours and the environment, he said. Smaller localized treatment plants spread around the region would minimize smells and possible malfunctions, he said.

“It’s rare that catastrophic failures go beyond the site boundaries, but you have houses along the [Viewfield] site boundaries,” Corps said.

While the CRD has yet to reveal how its sewage treatment would work, Corps suggested it could bear similarities to an industrial complex on Annacis Island in the Fraser River.

Corps said he expects Greater Victoria’s sewage would be treated at the proposed McLoughlin Point sewage treatment plant, with a slurry of sludge and water being piped up to a biosolids plant on Viewfield Road. The water would be removed from the slurry and sent back to the sewage treatment plant via a secondary pipe. Anaerobic digesters at the biosolid plant would process the material, which would be trucked to another place for disposal. A byproduct of the process is methane, which is stored in tanks.

The treatment process takes 40 days, Corps said.

Siting a large sewage treatment facility in Esquimalt “isn’t a good choice,” he said. Most sewage plants are located in industrial — not residential — areas, he said.

The NDP’s Maurine Karagianis, who is running for re-election in the riding, called for a detailed financial analysis of sewage treatment and more respect for Esquimalt residents and the environment.

“We need to do the best thing for the environment because that’s the best thing for all of us,” she said.

Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins, who sits on the CRD board, said the idea of multiple smaller treatment plants was dismissed when staff suggested it wasn’t economically viable.

But the current plans have Esquimalt residents furious, she said.

“We have to continue to push for something better.”

smcculloch@timescolonist.com

http://www.timescolonist.com/think-small-on-sewage-plans-expert-tells-forum-1.113168

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VIDEO NEWS CLIP: ELECTION CANDIDATES WADE INTO SEWAGE DEBATE


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VIDEO NEWS CLIP: SEWAGE PUBLIC FORUM KEEPS COMMUNITY TALKING

Diane Carr does great & Colwood Mayor Hammond interview important, but CTV missed interviewing mayor where sewage plant + sewage sludge plant could show up - Mayor Desjardins.

AND why listen to Saanich Mayor Leonard, the "MAYOR WHO IS NEVER THERE" as Leonard sends alternates to represent Saanich on CRD sewage committee.

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IAIN HUNTER: IN THE SLUDGE OF DESPOND OVER SEWAGE

IAIN HUNTER
TIMES COLONIST 
APRIL 21, 2013
[send your response to letters@timescolonist.com]

A scientist asked a good question as reported in the July 1896 issue of Scientific American: Why would people bring into their homes “a most deadly enemy” in the form of a water closet instead of being content to use an outdoor privy?

The enemy has come out of the closet, so to speak, but nobody has answered that question to my satisfaction.

Today, while modern toilets can be found centre-stage in designer bathrooms, what is flushed down them is far more disagreeable to everything and everybody, near and far, than it was 117 years ago. So is what goes down drains.

The waste we discharge contains organic compounds, metals, phosphates, nitrates, colloidal and suspended solids as well as human pathogens — and detergent compounds that make fish wonder what sex they are.

Scientists did a study of sewage-receiving waters in the Great Lakes in 2000-2002 and found identifiable quantities of drugs such as caffeine, carbamazepine (an anti-epileptic drug), cotinine (a metabolic of nicotine), the anti-depressant fluoxetine and atorvastatin, the drug prescribed to lower cholesterol.

What to do with all this stuff has seized today’s Greater Victorians by the throat and pocketbook. What a century ago could be regarded as a personal or family concern or inconvenience has become a major issue involving neighbourhoods and communities, towns and cities, regions and provinces and all the levels of government and bureaucracy that presumably are needed to make them function as somebody thinks they’re supposed to.

The factotums set over us have decided for us that using the strait as our waste receptacle is no longer to be tolerated. They’ve demanded levels of treatment without scientific justification or without any concern that the cures they demand will cause other problems.

The beadles have set unjustified and unfathomable deadlines.

So we, the taxpayers, find ourselves on the hook for a project that seems arse-backwards from the start. Property is acquired for “facilities” that haven’t been designed yet. Pipelines are ordered for routes not determined yet.

And nobody is told what method of treating the sludge will be used — because nobody seems to think it’s of interest at this stage or the business of those who’ll foot a large part of a whopping bill.

The information about the process that has leached out, despite the apparent determination of the Capital Regional District panjandrums not to commit themselves to anything until after the fact, is that it probably will involve “anaerobic digesters” to treat the sludge.

This sounds to me as if bacteria will be working on the stuff in the dark, without oxygen, to turn it into useful gases and soils and squeeze out a liquor that will be pumped back to the sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point, thence to be returned to the ocean without the nutrients we used to provide.

You know what’s coming next: We’ll be urged to use the methane produced to cook with, farmers will be urged to broadcast the solids over their fields and recycling will take on a new meaning.

Those elected to look after our several interests find that a big problem calls for a big solution, a sewage mega-project, about as far from the privies of old as one can get.

Chris Corp, a champion of green building, told a public forum in Victoria last week that big is not necessarily better.

He wrote a report for the provincial government in 2007 that advocated using small sewage treatment plants at scattered sites to produce marketable water, heat and fuel from sewage.

The stink would be less concentrated and the damage from possible malfunctions reduced, he said.

Such a common-sense solution, though, isn’t to be entertained by the CRD.

Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardin reported that staff “suggested” multiple smaller plants weren’t economically viable. Upon a suggestion unsupported by anything, official minds are closed.

What, I wonder, is economically viable about a project that’s going to make homeowners start paying before anything is built and with no assurance that we, the environment or the fish will benefit?

I’m descending into the sludge of despond.



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LETTERS

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAY STOP SEWAGE PLAN (Ferguson)

Victoria News
April 18, 2013

I have been following the wastewater saga closely for the past year. In an effort to understand it better, I have read reports, spoken to experts and attended meetings including the Capital Regional District’s own core area liquid waste management committee.

Many of my questions have been answered, but mysteries remain. Why do most members of this committee continue to stumble down this road to ruin? Assuming that we need wastewater treatment in Victoria, this is certainly not the way to go about it.

This planned megaproject is an enormous waste of money. It is a short-term, unsustainable folly that will prevent the development of higher environmental priorities and cripple our tax base. There are alternatives that would cost less and be more effective.

Furthermore, the CRD has so far ignored the public, bullied communities and disgraced themselves in the process. This is actually a failure of government at all levels. The federal government is to blame for creating a regulation that does not recognize local circumstances. The provincial government is to blame for following a path of perception. Regardless, the buck should have stopped at the CRD. Obviously, it did not.

Now, it is up to the public to stop this monster. And they will. The pressure is growing. Even civil disobedience has been discussed. This scandal could well result in the end of some political careers and even the CRD.

Dave Ferguson
Saanich


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BC; OTTAWA SHOULD  FIND SEWAGE-PLANT SITE (Rawlinson)

TIMES COLONIST 
APRIL 17, 2013
     
Re: “Sewage-plant sites sought within Victoria,” letter, April 13.

That’s a great letter. My feeling is simple: Keep looking.

The site should be local, and since the feds and province forced it, they should offer the land for free.

Logic says it couldn’t be more simple than that.

Cam Rawlinson
Victoria


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